Home, home on the Range

For the last couple of weekends I've been hitting buckets up at Randall's Island. Getting there is a minor pain in the ass, but I put up with it because Randall's is the superior choice in the city for whacking balls.

Lately I've been actually enjoying the time spent at the range for a change. I guess I am liking what I'm seeing out here. Swingwise whatever it is I'm grinding away at seems to be working and now it feels pretty good to launch balls on repeat.


Besides, out here it's not about score. Scoring--as I might have mentioned--is crushing my spirit lately. The course doesn't feel like a safe place right now. The range is though. Out here it's all about hitting sweet shots. Here if you can flush it, you are pretty good. The visceral pleasures of the game, without all the emotional hazards of actual golf course golf.

And out here there is no consequence. The world doesn't threaten to crumble after an errant ball like it tends to on the course. No, out here on the range you can easily shrug it off--as a person rightly should--chalking it up as a forgivable aberration due to the human condition and its natural variability.

No, out here there's just too many nice-looking shots flying around to dwell on the bad ones. When I'm here, the stress of everyday life fades into the background. As does the anguish of my painful, swollen handicap. This not even about "working on my game" or hoping to turn around my terrible scoring spell via some heavy practice. Nope, I just want to crack balls against metal. Addicted to that crack.

Plus the driving range is about the most solitary experience one can expect to have in golf and perhaps that suits me. Out here there's no waiting on people, nobody waiting on you. Go as fast or as slow as you feel like. Sure there's plenty of awful swings all around, but at least you're never held hostage by someone else's lameness. Just swing and swing until you're spent--it all takes a couple hours, tops. None of this four-and-a-half, five hour monkey business.

So basically I have become a driving range guy. That guy that settles in, spreads out, acts like he's at his home office. Again, becoming what I once despised. So what.

Aeration time at my local course.

I'll just keep riding this wave of enthusiasm, why not. It's a crappy time to be on the course anyways. Prices are up, teeboxes are backed up and the weather and conditions are nothing to get excited about. Far from it.