LAKELAND, Fla. – It’s just after 3 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon at Sanlan Golf Course, a 27-hole, 464-acre site that was once mined for phosphate. It’s home to the only full-size driving range on the south side of Lakeland, and with temperatures hovering around 72 degrees, the place is packed.
This is gritty golf. There’s a guy wearing a tank top slashing drives as Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be an American” blares over the speakers. There’s a group clinic going on at the short-game area. Three-year-old Ireland Decker is amusing herself with the plastic range bucket in between bites of goldfish while her dad works on his game. If she’s not jumping off the empty bucket, she’s wearing it like a helmet.
On Tuesday, the USGA and R&A released their distance report, which determined that we have a distance problem in golf, and that it’s moving the game in unsustainable directions.
One day later, this revelation had yet to trickle down to most of those on the range at Sanlan. Diego Nunez, 20, was one of the most well-versed out of the bunch, and his grandfather got him hooked on golf less than a month ago.
Nunez, a Barstool Sports fan, happened to stumble upon Fore Play’s latest podcast, which addressed the upcoming report and what it might mean for professional golf, soon-to-be-obsolete courses and the environment. The Barstool crew took a complex issue and laid it out in easy-to-understand terms for a newbie like Nunez.
“It gives you a lot to think about,” said Nunez. “This rule would be more about the future than say the next five years.”
Athletes and technology will continue to evolve. Eventually, we’ll run out of land.
Nunez’s buddy, Shane Schmucker, is a caddie at Streamsong. He’d hate to see pros like Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka be forced into equipment that takes heat off of their games, but he’s all about amateur Joe learning to play from the correct tee.
It’s part of Schmucker’s daily speech at Streamsong, getting guests to move up to a yardage that makes sense.
“You’re paying $300 to play,” Schmucker said. “You might as well enjoy a hair of it.”
Big-hitting pros coupled with plus-sized golf courses have helped to create an epidemic of recreational golfers playing from the wrong set of tees. That’s in the USGA’s report too. It’s one reason why rounds of golf in America drag on far too long.
“People think if they play the golf course all the way back, it makes you better somehow,” said Wendy Doolan, who knows just about everyone on the range.
Doolan, a 51-year-old Aussie who won three times on the LPGA, started the FunGolf Club at Sanlan six months ago.
Golf, she said, isn’t about shooting 62 like the pros. Doolan didn’t have much fun chasing low numbers for most of her life. Now she spends her days giving students attainable goals that aren’t attached to score – counting fairways hit, number of pars, how many times a chip landed on the green. Her lessons are 10 to 15 minutes long. People can’t stay focused long enough for an hour-long lesson, she said, and they feel too much pressure.
Doolan’s students sometimes hit marshmallows and poker chips. Her group clinics cover everything from pre-shot routines to balance to how to increase swing speed.
Her driver clinics are always full. But she’s trying to get her students to understand that being able to two-putt is kind of cool, too. A $79 monthly fee gives students four private lessons and an unlimited number of group sessions. Even a beginner in his 90s named Don signed up.
On Wednesday afternoon, Doolan crouched down on the range to help 12-year-old Anna Lloren get her club in the correct position. This was Lloren’s second lesson, and her follow-through is a thing of beauty. When the soft-spoken seventh-grader took a full swing and missed the ball entirely, she broke out in a smile full of braces. That’s because Doolan was there making even the misses seem fun.
On her last swing of the 10-minute session, Lloren hit a stunner. High-fives all around.
The distance debate, and what to do about it, seemed about as far away as the moon in that moment. And yet, the conversation is happening for beginners like Lloren and soon-to-be beginners like tiny Ireland, who might one day become as obsessed with the range balls as she is with the green basket.
The distance debate is, at its core, about protecting the game. Making golf environmentally and economically sustainable. Making it practical. Making it less about power and more about well-rounded skill.
Scaling back so that ultimately, golf can grow.
[jwplayer 5Vf9mTup-9JtFt04J]
MORE ON THE DISTANCE REPORT:
- Eamon Lynch: So begins the battle for golf’s future
- PGA Tour players split on key issues for game’s future
- Gains have golf moving on an unsustainable path
- Five key takeaways from the distance report
- Don’t blame amateurs because Tour pros hit the ball too far
- LPGA: Distance not a hindrance to its tour but does impact recreational players
[opinary poll=”do-you-think-distance-is-a-problem-in-go” customer=”golfweek”]