Driving Range Use

Here is a topic I have been wanting to discuss for a while. Even though we rebuilt our range five years and expanded the tee surface by 50%, we can still struggle to re-grow turf before the tees are rotated back to a particular spot. Our greatest struggle is in the winter when cold weather prevents rapid turf growth. The single biggest impact each member can have to help the situation is having a small footprint when it comes to range use. What do I mean? Create your divots in as tight as pattern as possible. I saw these two very different stalls this morning. The one golfer consumed about 6 square feet while the other consumed about 2 square feet. Bottom-line is if everyone hit balls on the range so that their divot pattern took up as little turf as possible, we would have better and more mature turf on the range year round. The first photo is the proper divot pattern, the second photo is not.