Target roams in distance - Fairview Golf Center

Target roams in distance

By Kevin Devaney Jr.
The Journal News

Javier Torres hopped out of his bandaged and dented John Deere and began unloading the hundreds of balls he'd collected. His ears were still ringing.

sound of that tiny sphere crashing to the metal inches from his head.

"It's like somebody puts a pot on my head," he said, "an then bangs it with a spoon."

If you've ever been to a driving range, you've seen somebody like Torres riding around in the motorized cart. Odds are you scrambled to pick up a ball, put in on a tee and drove it right at him.

a pro, a 20-handicapper, or a pack of teenagers on a Friday night.

"It scares you, but I don't mind it," said Joe Altero, an 18-year-old from Mahopac who works at National GolfWorkx in Mahopac. "It's kind of funny to watch people try and hit you."

Torres doesn't mind getting hit, either. And contrary to what people think, customers can't get in trouble for it.

"Everybody wants to hit the cart," Fariview general manager Joe Mahecha said. "If the cart is out there at 100 yards and you hit, who cares? Good for you."

What doesn't get seen at a driving range is what happens once those balls are collected.

Fairview is one of the largest facilities in the Lowere Hudson Valley, with 80,000 golf balls in its rotation. Those balls are replaced twice a year, most recently last Wednesday night, to ensure quality.

In all the range has 300,000 balls across its 17 acres. A portion of those are wedged alongside the 120-foot-high net that guards the parking lot.

More than 100,000 of them are boxed in a green shed. Those balls were taken out of circulation last summer and used only during the winter when it snowed.

Most ranges use limited-flight balls, which are durable and low-cost. The most expensive range ball costs between three and five cents. Fairview, formerly known as Golden Bear, uses the "tour range" balls, a step below what a golfer would buy in a store.

"I've always said that a driving range is like a diner," Mahecha said. "You want a diner to have good coffee. If they don't have good coffee, you aren't going to go back. At a range, you want to have good balls and good mats. That's why you spend a little more money on news balls. That's all golfer's want. They don't care if the place is painted, or if we have a roof on place. Just good balls."

Once Torres loads the balls he collects, he puts them in large buckets. While most facilities simply simply dump those balls into machines for distribution, Fairview is far more sophisticated.

Its balls are transported into a room for cleaning. The balls go into a 150-gallon tank, where they are soak for more than an hour. Then they go into a drum brush to be dried, then up a conveyor belt to be dropped into the distribution machine.

From the time a ball is hit, it could be hours before it comes out in its next bucket.

Like most of the workers at the smaller ranges, Altero does the distribution manually. His job primarily consists of separating the balls into various buckets and working the front desk of the facility.

The question he is asked most, though, is about driving the cart.

It's become routine for him, but he vividly remembers his first experience.

"It was when I started working here last summer," said Altero, a Lakeland High School senior. "I was so scared because there's a little opening in the front of the cart. It's smaller than a golf ball, but I always think that the ball might come right through. I've gotten used to it though.

As many at driving ranges have learned the hard way over the years, there is a danger in aiming for the cart -- the ricochet.

I've seen plenty of people hit the cart and they'll be laughing." Torres said. "And then the ball will shoot back at the tee box and people are jumping out of the way. You have to be careful."

Reach Kevin Devaney Jr.

at kdevaney@lohud.com