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Range Divots

Playdough said:
Well after seeing this I will be doing stripes when possible. I used to the large patch, but from here on it will be the stripes.
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Same here.
 
I typically will do striped but there is something cool to me about that perfect divot box with razor sharp edges


Proud Member of #TeamParadise
 
I take patches but once had a green keeper ask us to take scattered divots. His feeling was that the smaller divots would fill in faster from all sides rather than trying to fill the larger area. This is in Florida where our grass does not, typically, grow from seed but from runners.
 
I was never a range rat - I almost always used the range for warm-up, and 25 - 30 balls was always enough warmup. And a quarter of those would be off a tee. All that said, I pretty much went for the scatter, and we had sand available to repair divots. I usually repaired not only my divots but any others in the area near where I hit (if unoccupied).

Maybe I should throw in this caveat, because I thought it was a great practice. At my course, the rangers and starters would observe players on the course and the range, and if they noticed they were really vigilant about fixing and sanding their divots they would sometimes hand out a free range ball token or (on the course) a free drink ticket or even a free cart ticket. Not that this was done so much to hurt the bottom-line so to speak, but enough to where it really helped encourage good course and range etiquette among the players.
 
Striped. One of the few useful things I leaned at college. Yesterday I hit 250 balls and had several nice long stripes.:act-up:
 
Never knew anything about this. Will ask the range next time and see what they prefer. I have done the patch the over the two years so catching this early gives me something else to help manage the range with. I've seen scattered and patch, never stripped. Stripped could be good and artistic.
 
The superintendent if my course just posted the same image on twitter. I have always hit big patches. I will switch to stripes. Really tho, that range gets so much use the whole individual area is dirt in a day no matter what people do.
 
Now I feel bad. Since I have been hitting on grass I have been digging a tunnel to China.
 
widespot said:
The superintendent if my course just posted the same image on twitter. I have always hit big patches. I will switch to stripes. Really tho, that range gets so much use the whole individual area is dirt in a day no matter what people do.
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Your last sentence is my range. It gets a ton of use and by the the middle of summer good grass is hard to come by. Although my 2 or 3 2-300 ball sessions a week probably did it no favors.
 
One of those things I'd never really given much through to. I end up with a pretty scattered pattern anyway. But like Dan said, when you're hitting a couple of big buckets, you're laying waste to a ton of turf no matter what.
 
The last time I went to the range, There was barely any grass to be found so it really didn't matter, but I'm usually scattered, though I like the idea of stripped.
 
I'm a large patch guy. The super at my club want either stripped or patch. Each super is different. here is a link to his blog post about it. http://www.tacomaturf.net/2011/09/range-tee-divots-right-way.html

here is what he says about scattered.

The image (scattered divots) above is horrific enough to give me sleepless nights. Someone was hitting range balls in this area who clearly has had no instruction in the proper way to practice on the range tee. Hitting on natural grass all year long is a luxury that our membership cherishes, but if everyone wasted grass like this person, they would loose that privilege. You can see that this person took a full divot with each shot. Also, this person spread out his or her shots over such a large area that there is no room for the next person to practice because now that person will have to stand in divots or move to a different hitting station.​
 
SaskeyInWash said:
I'm a large patch guy. The super at my club want either stripped or patch. Each super is different. here is a link to his blog post about it. http://www.tacomaturf.net/2011/09/range-tee-divots-right-way.html

here is what he says about scattered.

The image (scattered divots) above is horrific enough to give me sleepless nights. Someone was hitting range balls in this area who clearly has had no instruction in the proper way to practice on the range tee. Hitting on natural grass all year long is a luxury that our membership cherishes, but if everyone wasted grass like this person, they would loose that privilege. You can see that this person took a full divot with each shot. Also, this person spread out his or her shots over such a large area that there is no room for the next person to practice because now that person will have to stand in divots or move to a different hitting station.​
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This is my problem with scattered. 1 person can ruin the whole area. Most of the people at my range do scattered and it's a mess of bad footing and weeds.
 
widespot said:
This is my problem with scattered. 1 person can ruin the whole area. Most of the people at my range do scattered and it's a mess of bad footing and weeds.
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The weeds are not the fault of the person using a scattered pattern on the range ... that's the super's problem. As for the bad footing ... filling the divots with sand takes care of that problem as well, no? I have never seen a sign telling someone what sort of pattern they should take with their divots at any range I've ever been to. That includes the ranges at the country clubs I've played and public courses (including the nicer courses at Hilton Head). I suppose I could have overlooked them.

Not sure why golf courses fail to give proper instruction or directions on site.

One of reasons I don't hit in a patch is because I saw my instructor take a kid from the local high school to task for wearing out too large of an area with his divots. He told him to space his shots out so he could give the grass a chance to grow back quickly. I guess a stripped pattern would work as well in this instance.
 
I really take shallow divots and they are scattered.
 
I remember seeing a 'behind the scenes' feature during the Open Championship week some 10-15 years ago and they were featuring Jesper Parnevik. They were following him around and at one point hit the range. He was doing his range work and they asked about his straight line divots on the range. He said that grounds crews preferred it because if you hit in a line then you're likely to take less grass on each shot and it is easier to fix.

Always made sense to me so that's what I've been doing ever since I saw that. You get the benefit of making sure your divots stay straight down the target line and also you can hit more balls and use less grass if you place the ball on the spot just behind the last divot.
 
The guys that grow range grass love me. #nodivots
 
I've never seen large patch before. I do strips, have for years. A few weeks ago, one my local pros was lamenting how his high school golf team constantly uses the 'scattered' approach. Although scattered may be ok for turf management purposes, I'm pretty sure he hates that scattered makes poor use of the hitting area square footage. In other words, its simply an inefficient use of space. Of course, he has a huge hitting area and maybe uses 50% of it per year.

~Rock
 
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