This golf driving range has been here about as long as I can remember, and it's really starting to…read moreshow its age. In general the entire premises could use some TLC, and though I'm generally just one of those "give me an open field to smack stuff into" kind of guys, I can't help but feel that there are better fields to smack little round white balls into.
From the entrance, the paved driveway is being gradually reclaimed by the surrounding woodland, and that can kind of be said in general of the whole place. The parking lot is more than large enough for the range, even on the nicest of days I would think. The clubhouse is no longer a clubhouse. Over the years it went from being walk-in and stocking a few items, even re-gripping clubs on demand, to just a window with an attendant, to now, no attendant. That's all honestly fine with me, the ball dispenser seems to work fine, even if giving it your money isn't the most intuitive thing in the world. Other than the ball vend-o-tron, you get a pepsi machine.
Speaking of giving it your money, it's $10 for a medium bucket of balls currently, which is 70 balls. That's higher than most of the surrounding golf courses, particularly Jamestown, which has recently overhauled their range into a better experience on days with or without a mat.
On the subject of the balls, they need to be purged. In my bucket, I got about half newer balls, and of the remaining half, balls that still had dimples but were covered in gouges and marks, to balls that have been weather-worn almost completely smooth. This item needs the most attention, as I'm not really getting any kind of accurate practice with balls that bad.
On my visit, it was "mat-only" but i kind of get the feeling that is the default here now. The grass in front of the matted area is non-existent. The mats do not have tees for you to hit driver, nor are they the newer mats that you can actually slip your own tee into. The result is, people hit irons off the mat, then step forward onto the dirt to tee up for driver practice. On the plus side, there were more than enough tees for me to scavenge instead of using my own.
The short game area has fallen into total disrepair, it's not even acknowledged anymore.
On a nice spring day, at any given time i was there, there was probably about 10-12 people. Means this place makes a decent chunk of change, and someone just comes along now and then to tractor up the balls and refill the vend-o-tron. A pressure washer, new mats that are tee-able so they can re-seed the grass in front, and a bunch of new range balls would really bring this place back to prominence even if the short game area is never to be used again.
