Every single morning at 6:00 am, a team of 3 or 4 staff members work to get the practice facility ready for the day. Everyday, except for Monday's (we open at 9:30 am), the practice facility opens at 7:30am. It remains open until 7:00 pm or later. Given our flexibility on the hours of operation, we need every morning until 7:30 am to be ready for the day. Therefore, the gate will never open prior to 7:30 am. There is a lot that goes into the daily setup, specifically paying attention to the details. You can see below, Mattson is using a rope to be sure all the ball crates are perfectly in line and perfectly spaced out on 12-foot centers.
By now you've noticed the 'No Chipping' signs that are located by the putting green and also the teaching tee. If you want to chip short little shots a yard or two from the edge of the green, you can certainly do that, provided no ball mark is created. However, we've had members take a bag of balls and hit 20 to 30-yard wedges into that green. The ballmarks (even after they're repaired) left a terrible practice putting green surface for those wanting to use the green for its intended purpose. In addition, the amount of golf balls we picked out of the woods and off of Arnold Road (below the green) was incredible. We have two great short game greens and we ask that you use those greens for short game practice. Let's save this green for putting only.
We would also like to save the teaching tee for just that... teaching. It might be tempting to grab a leather bag of balls and use this tee to hit pitch shots towards the closest short game green. Following an afternoon of practice, one could get rid of a large percentage of turf here, by way of divots. We constructed this tee for our golf professional staff to use during lessons. While I am not is favor of signage, particularly negative signage, we are trying to keep the practice facility in great shape for the benefit of the entire membership and we ask for your help.
