Lack of golf driving ranges
 

What's with the serious lack of driving ranges within TV? There are 4 on TV property that are well North of 466A plus the public one at Lady Lake and another public one in Oxford.

The newest one at the Sarasota Golf Practice Center was built 13 years ago. Hasn't TV over tripled in size since 2011? I don't see any reason that a range couldn't have been added to any of the executive course south of 466A or 44 for that matter. There's certainly no shortage of land that TV owns.

Incidentally, I went to the Sarasota driving range today for the first time. I'm south of 44 so normally just drive a few minute outside of TV to the Continental Country club and use their range for $4/small or $6/large. When I went to Sarasota today I was directed to buy a token from a booth for $6. I then took the token to a machine and proceeded have it fill the bucket. It filled the bucket up to around the 1/3rd mark. I then pointed out to someone that the machine must be malfunctioning but then was made aware that you only get that much per token. I understand that they need to make a profit, but charging the same price as the outside TV places for 1/4 of the range balls just seems like gouging.

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New driving range is under construction at Eastport.

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Here's a tip that I learned the hard way. Place the basket under the ball dispenser before inserting the token into the slot.

Why? Can stuff 100 plus or CYVs or patio villas in that space.

I thought the ball machine was jammed until I realized you needed 2 to 3 tokens to fill a bucket. Yes that's absurd.

Seriously if you look at what can be done just look at what Continental CC has, it's unmanned, accepts credit cards or the bulk pass card and takes up around 150'x1000' of space.

Surely they could've found some extra space beside an executive or P&P course to add a driving range. Adding one at Eastport won't be enough when it's serving 75k people living south of 44.

If you were the developer and people were still buying homes down south even though there are far fewer courses and driving ranges south of 44 compared to north of 44, would you waste the money building golf courses?

They are currently building a whole bunch of golf courses south of the turnpike. Once those are complete, south of 466A will have more executive courses than north of 466A within a few years.

Doesn't make sense to have a 3-1 ratio of driving ranges that are generally busy north of 466A and only 2 south of 466A.

Agree and you are paying to hit off of mats most of the time. Makes a person feel good about ball striking as you can not hit a FAT shot off of a mat. Personally go to Baseline in Bellview. Bigger buckets and no mats.

Probably main reason for less/no driving ranges is the cost of land. Most impendent ranges have been closing EVERYWHERE

I prefer hitting off of grass over matts, however, I prefer matts over dirt. I can't imagine how, or how much it would cost, to provide space and seed and maintenance to allow for all of us hackers to hit off of actual grass, here in TV.

Will probably be $7 a small bucket by then. :cry:

See the post about golf being a dying sport. Is it a sport?

Driving ranges are huge money losers, unless that land is valueless ... which means you can't afford to build them in residential areas.

Florida has a lot of "water ranges", which is usually a bit more economically feasible, but still not a great investment, more of a "cost of doing business" as a golf course.

In my entire golfing life, I've only run into 2 ranges of any value, that weren't connected to a Private Country Club. One outside of Boston (Stone Meadow) and the one at World Woods in Brooksville. I'm sure there are more, but they're few and far between.

In the Villages, they are not driving ranges, they are learning centers.

The teaching and equipment sales generates the revenue for that piece of real estate.
Bonus, that they can put a driving range next to the learning centers. And at a spot like Sarasota, it’s a lake. No homes.
In Eastport, the learning center takes the place of another amenity that would go in that space.

And there is not enough volume of lessons to sustain more teaching pros (i.e. learning centers) YEAR ROUND.

You can get some good teaching pros that split time between FLA and someplace north, but that is getting harder (pros are married, kids, etc).