Driving range at the house!

[TN94z]

Well, after my cousin and I have started really hitting the range, we decided that this was going to get really expensive in the long run. My dad has 50 acres at his house. So we are going to find a spot and mow it out for a driving range. We are going to use my sky caddie to get exact yardages (exact as they can be) and build some signs for yardage markers. I don't know if we are going to set it up for the driver or not but more than likely it will end up that way. I really want to focus on many short game yardages. We have a friend that used to work at the local golf course and he has about 5000 shag balls, so we have a supply of those. The only thing we will have to buy is something to pull behind the golf cart to pick the balls up. Later on we may set up a green with bunkers around it for sand play, etc...My dad is in the construction business so we have endless supplies of sand and dirt and equipment. I was thinking maybe building a small green at each yardage(not good grass, just something) and maybe build it at an angle banked toward us so the balls will hit there and stay instead of hitting and running 20 yards past(this is just for picking up purposes).

Does anyone have any suggestions or maybe any tips if you have done this before? What works best, what doesn't?

[right handed phil mickelson]

well I really don't have any suggestions but I'm going to your house when your finished.....

[TN94z]

My cousin used to do landscaping and depending on how much freedom my dad gives us, we could actually make us a pretty descent practice facility

Also, does anyone know where I could get a used cheap golf ball picker that pulls behind a golf cart?

[Chief Broom]

While it would be neat to have a practice range in your backyard it sounds like an awful lot of work to me in the long run. I think I'd rather get a range membership somewhere convenient. If time is of a premium you can figure that a good bit of the time you could be practicing will be spent mowing and retrieving/picking up balls. A local course offers range memberships for $60 a month (or as part of club membership for $110 per month). While that isn't exactly cheap you can make it pay if you spend enough time there. You could easily hit 5-10 buckets of balls a week and at $5 a bucket that begins to make sense. Especially when you add in top notch putting and short game practice areas (with sand trap).

[PaoliGolfer]

Very cool idea, I'm jealous.

However....how do you plan to "use my sky caddie to get exact yardages" . Does sky caddie have a feature that allows you to get yardages between two points for an unmapped course? If it does , that's a neat feature I wasn't aware of.

[TN94z]

While it would be neat to have a practice range in your backyard it sounds like an awful lot of work to me in the long run. I think I'd rather get a range membership somewhere convenient. If time is of a premium you can figure that a good bit of the time you could be practicing will be spent mowing and retrieving/picking up balls. A local course offers range memberships for $60 a month (or as part of club membership for $110 per month). While that isn't exactly cheap you can make it pay if you spend enough time there. You could easily hit 5-10 buckets of balls a week and at $5 a bucket that begins to make sense. Especially when you add in top notch putting and short game practice areas (with sand trap).

That would be the easiest way to go....if I had somewhere in my area that offered that. I am in a small town with two driving ranges. Both of these are at courses that charge per bucket...no memberships. One of these is irons only. Neither of these have yardages marked. It's not really going to be that much work. Picking up balls is easy with a picker. Mowing will take what, 30 minutes?? Finishing mower behind a tractor makes it quick. Not to mention that we have several buddies that we can charge 5 bucks a bucket and make a little money at the same time.

Very cool idea, I'm jealous.

Yes, you can "mark this ball location" and then go to a point out in the field and hit the "mark ball location again" and it will tell you what the distance was from your last mark. That is how all of these people on here are using GPS to see how far they hit the ball.

[bioman]

Are you going to set up those 50 ft poles to hold the nets, so that the balls stay in-bounds?

[TN94z]

Are you going to set up those 50 ft poles to hold the nets, so that the balls stay in-bounds?

Who hits balls out of bounds?

No, right now we won't have much longer than 170 yards or something to start with. We hit them straight enough to not worry about that at the moment. We are going to mow out enough that the misses will still be in the short grass. Remember, this isn't an open for business range. This is mainly just for a few friends that all hit pretty straight. We are basically going to use it for ball contact with mid irons (because I want to see the actual ball flight as opposed to hitting on my friend's simulator). I also want it for 100 yards and in. I will have many different short yardage targets.

[Golfaway]

That's a pretty cool idea, it's a lot similar to my indoor golf dream project.
One day I will have a huge hanger of some sort, I will furnish it with green carpets of various thicknesses and setup 2 or 3 holes. It will all be artificial, no real grass, and for the greens I will use hard think carpets. That way you could play indoor golf without having to worry about maintaining the course.

Just think about it, you'll love it. You will even play better knowing that whatever happens your ball won't go out of bounds (it will just hit the hanger's metal walls and come back into play) and that you will never hit fat (you can hardly hit fat on carpets).

[Golfaway]

Oh, sorry, I started talking about my dream project and forgot about yours, pardon me :)
One thing you need to do is make sure you have a good reliable method to retrieve the balls, or else they'll start getting lost and it will be costy on the long term.

One more thing, you don't really need to be that punctual about mowing the range, just make sure you mow the area where you will be hitting the balls from, the rest doesn't really matter as it won't be hit from, but take care, don't leave it too tall either or else you will start having a hell of a hard time finding your balls.

Good luck and update us on what you do. Also, I might be crashing in on you once you finish that project ;)

[TN94z]

Oh, sorry, I started talking about my dream project and forgot about yours, pardon me :)

Will do! I plan on taking some pictures during the process. I mean it's not going to be anything spectacular, but I will post some when we get done just to show what we are doing. We are actually going to go out this afternoon and find our spot and get this thing going. We have some tournaments starting in July that I want to really get ready for.