Behind the scenes: Paying a higher price for practice
Tour veterans recall costs of range balls
Web posted
Monday, April 5, 2004
Newcomers on the PGA Tour can't believe pros once paid to hit practice-range balls at tour stops.
For the past 20 years, those balls have been complimentary for players, who can hit as many as they want.
"I've heard stories," said Tim Petrovic (Stats | Bio) , who is 37 but didn't join the tour until 2002.
"That's surprising," said 23-year-old Ricky Barnes, the low amateur in the 2003 Masters Tournament and a pro now.
Barnes doubts he's ever paid for range balls.
"Maybe in high school ... I think we got them free in high school, too," he said.
Mark O'Meara (Stats | Bio) , 47, said "it wasn't that long ago" that pros had the added expense of paying to practice each week.
"There was a guy at a table, and you paid a couple of bucks for a bag or bucket of balls," said 45-year-old Larry Mize (Stats | Bio) , who said pros had to fork over money for balls at least through the early 1980s.
Veterans such as O'Meara, Mize, 50-year-old Jay Haas (Stats | Bio) and 54-year-old Tom Watson (Stats | Bio) are among the dying breed who remember the days when practice came with a price.
"Back then, the range wasn't stacked up all day long because guys couldn't really afford to spend all of their money on range balls," O'Meara said. "There weren't any courtesy cars either. I think once in a while players need to take a little gut check on what's going on. They should be pretty thankful for what we've got."
"Nowadays, fortunately, we're almost given everything," said Barnes, who didn't qualify for the Masters this year.
"It's come a long way," Mize said. "It's amazing out here. We're spoiled rotten - to the core."
Imagine how much money Vijay Singh (Stats | Bio) , the current tour's most famous range rat, would have shelled out. Back then, if Singh didn't have the money to stay on the range all day like he does now, maybe he wouldn't be the No. 2 golfer in the world golf ranking.
"I know guys that would hit half a bucket and put the rest in a little sack and in their bag and after their round, they'd go back and hit the rest of them rather than buy a whole new bucket," Haas said.
"We paid full price; there were no discounts," Watson said.
"It was focused practice," Mize said.
Now, not only are the balls complimentary, but players also have a choice. At last week's BellSouth Classic, seven of the top brands were available.
At the Masters this week, players have the choice of seven brands: Titleist, Nike, Precept, Callaway, Strata, Srixon and Wilson. The club is also trying to get Dunlop balls for John Daly (Stats | Bio) , a late qualifier.
What a difference more than 20 years makes. Haas said that back then, players didn't have a choice of balls. There was normally a different brand at each stop - usually the one the club's host pro had an endorsement deal with.
"I seem to remember even hitting some striped ones sometimes," Mize said, referring to standard range balls with a red stripe around them.
In those days at the Masters, balls were not available for the players at the range.
"We brought our own balls and had our caddies shag them," Watson said. "That was dangerous."
"I can remember times they were trying to park cars out there in the driving range as I was trying to practice," said Charles Coody (Stats | Bio) , the 1971 Masters champion. "You were hitting balls over some of the cars."
Players would carry a shag bag with them when they went to tournaments.
"There are probably quite a few young players who don't know what a shag bag is," Haas said. "They probably never picked up their own balls. They just hit the range balls at their club."
"There are a lot of young guys on the tour, they're nice guys, but they have no conception of where everything has come from," Coody said, "and that's a shame."
