Sports

Dana Road range not just for drivers

Instructor Bob Baker makes a chip shot.

By Bill Moss, Published: May 23, 2013

Golf instructor Bob Baker says the short game is the key to scoring in golf for a simple reason.

"Seventy-five percent of your shots happen within 60 yards of the hole," he says.
That's why Baker, the teaching pro, and co-founders Fred Thomas and Dirk Blythe added a nine-hole pitch-and-putt practice course to the reinvented Champions Golf Center, at 640 Dana Road, nine-tenths of a mile from Four Seasons Boulevard. They call it Champions Creek Golf Course.
"We call it short game challenge shots," Baker says. "The greens are real small and hard to hit. Most people never practice that part of their game. They buy a bucket of balls and get their driver out."
The driving range has that option, too. A bucket of balls costs $10, and along with that during an introductory offer golfers can get a free round on the short practice course.
A one-time news photographer for the Associated Press, Baker tried professional golf, knocking around on the minor circuit.
"I decided to teach," he says. "There's more money than sponsoring yourself in mini-tours."
It helps, too, that he's good with people.
"I can talk to people," he says. "I was a bartender for 20 years."
Baker has teamed up with Thomas and Blythe for what they hope will become the go-to driving range in a rapidly shrinking universe of driving ranges. Jake's Driving Range on U.S. 25 in Naples and the Family Fun Center on Brookside Camp Road have both closed, victims of a poor economy and declining number of golfers. The driving range at the Highland Lake Golf Club will go out of business by Sept. 30 when the golf course becomes a park for the Village of Flat Rock, provided the sale to Flat Rock closes as planned.
Thomas, a lifelong golfer, left his job as a mortgage broker in Brevard and formed a partnership with Blythe, a scratch golfer who has been in the golf industry all his adult life. Blythe built the chip-and-putt range by hand with a shovel, Thomas says. The greens are not in Augusta National shape at the moment but with time the owners hope to groom the bent grass into a glassy surface that will challenge golfers in both putting and chipping.
The driving range surface is all grass, not rubber mats. Facing south, golfers can see Pinnacle Mountain in the distance, an apple orchard beyond the range, a horse pasture on the right and goat farm on the left. Distances are color-coded and laser measured.
"In late afternoon you're not hitting into the sun," Baker says. "It's the only range in the area where you can see the ball."
Champions Golf Center is open from 9 a.m. to dark during summer hours.

For information call 828.708.2381.