Practicing for this game gets really expensive really quick if you aren’t careful with your money. I found myself plunking down almost $20 a the local driving range the other day just to take my new irons for a spin. Of course that was for the 164 ball bucket, but still, that works out to a crap ton of money per ball, like almost a dime a piece. The bad part, or should I say worst part, is that you really do have to have some range time to get better at this game and there’s not a ton of ways to save on range time. There are a few great tips though, and if your range has any of them available, take advantage of them as quickly as you can.
Buy A Punch Card: If your range has a multi-bucket discount available, take it. Most of the time, the savings are about 10% over buying individual buckets. Since winter is quickly approaching, you may skip a round or two in favor of the range anyways, so that makes a 10 or 20 bucket punch card about the same cost as those rounds plus a few extra buckets. Punch cards save you money and will encourage you to practice regularly during the ‘off-season’. For an example on this deal, a large bucket at my local range is $8. The 10 bucket punch card is $68 and the 40 bucket punch card is only $230. That’s a $90 savings, or almost 30% off!
Look For Big Bucket Deals And Share: There’s nothing more fun that hitting balls with a buddy at the range. Fortunately, many ranges offer a deal where you buy a large and you get a small for free, or buy one get one free on their largest sizes. Of course, you can’t expect to hit 200-300 balls on your own, but with a bud in tow, you certainly can make an effort of it.
Take Lessons At Your Range: Quite often, during and after lessons, the range pros will offer you extra balls as a bonus feature. If your range does this, you can end up getting that swing fix and a bulk amount of balls for a very reasonable amount of money.
Shop Around For Your Range: Many courses offer range balls cheaper than stand-alone range facilities. Courses use greens fees to cover the cost of the range and usually sell more balls to people that are warming up than they do to people that are practicing. Stand-alone ranges have to deal with paying staff, rent and facility costs that aren’t covered by anything else but the range balls you hit. The price per ball should be close to double at a stand-alone facility. If you have a good course with a good range near by, look to pay substantially less per bucket than if you go to that double decker, in city range. For example, that bucket at The Golf Club At Echo Falls is $8 but a similar bucket at the stand alone range near me is $12. The other nice part about heading to the course to hit balls is that you can putt or chip for free at most of them as well.
Hopefully you can find some of the savings that I have around you as well. By shopping the price per ball at the range instead of the price per bucket, you can really make your practice time much less of a strain on your pocket book. Remember to watch for coupons and sign up at your local range for their email list and follow them on their social media pages to keep up on the latest deals. If you can save enough when you practice, you will probably be more inclined to do more of it, which will only make your game better.
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