August 28-September 3, 2003

naked city

Swing Kids

Illustration By: Jeffrey Bouchard

Head to the driving range for a cheap excursion, and more ball jokes than you can shake a club at.

by Alex Richmond

Letís face it: The summer of 2003 has been a bust. First, it was too cold. Then, the usual stifling humidity swarmed over us, many times in 100-percent form, a.k.a. rain. Lots of it. The sun only came out on Mondays, making beach weekends a gloomy, indoor affair full of books and board games.

As if the weather being totally against us weren't enough, the fucking economy kept us in another kind of prison, ensuring we couldn't do anything really extravagant, like buy more than one pair of flip-flops or go somewhere other than your friend's parents' house in Brigantine. And now the summer's almost over. Great. Something else to bitch about.

Even with all this bad juju, there's still time to squeeze out a few last drops of summer fun. The kind of low-maintenance, low-cost fun that's easy enough to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Fuck getting up early to beat beach traffic. You just have to hop in the car and drive a few miles to Camden to the Cooper River Driving Range, buy a bucket of balls and whack away.

It's not really a sport, barely exercise, and yet you're outside with friends, laughing again.

I took my friend Nick with me to Cooper River. We lamented the fact that they don't sell beer there, then got over it and decided to concentrate on our game. We had just watched Caddyshack for the nth time, and were full of bad jokes and some ideas on how to hit balls. We giggled at the sign that states: "Anyone found deliberately aiming for workers or road or throws balls will be reported to police." Isn't that why the ball- collecting carts have protective cages?

Resolving to not get kicked out for bad behavior, we paid $8 for a medium bucket (about 75 balls) and picked out clubs (rental fee $1), then went to the ball dispenser, dubbed the Range Servant, to fill up. Using the Range Servant is a treat in itself. Besides prompting us to think of all the people we know who could use some extra balls, if not a pair of their own, the machine releases its load like a square, stainless steel chicken.

There are two levels of tee space at Cooper River. Up top is for the juveniles and amateurs. On the ground below are the real golfers, who hit their shots straight and hardly ever slice out and scatter a pack of daydreaming geese. We went up top to chop and slice away, hear the "woo hoos" from little kids and enjoy the view of Route 130.

Like anything else, in golf there are times when you miss (then you hear a "whiff!" sound) and times when you hit it in just the right spot. When that happens, you feel it all the way up your arms and hear a satisfying "thwack." Then you're rewarded by seeing it really soar out straight. At Cooper River, you aim for patches of green that pop out of a body of water -- or you can just hit the ball and try to see how far you can make it travel. After a few laughable first hacks, I was regularly hitting the 100-yard mark.

With airplanes lazily circling overhead, making their way toward Philly International, the air at the Cooper River Driving Range really smells like Jersey. The range has it's own soundtrack, too: Any loud car stereo provides a few minutes of music for golfers. The atmosphere is anything but romantic, but that didn't stop a beefy guy with his own set of clubs from trying to get in close to his lady friend, showing her a better swing. Who knew there was so much caressing of shoulders in golf?

Then there were all the ball jokes and Caddyshack references. Nick and I kept reminding each other to "be the ball." Proud of my skills, I said, "Hey, I'm a real ball-buster." Nick agreed. "Yeah, you're swatting some balls around. Hey look, my balls are coming out of my pockets." You get the idea.

In an hour and a half, we had made quite a dent in our buckets. I was hitting high and straight and consistently making it past the 175-yard mark. Nick broke 200 yards, but said he was having problems "getting it up." We tried to hit some birds, but missed. Finally Nick said, "Now I'm like Lance Armstrong, down to one ball." We were done. He had racked up two blisters.

The next day, I had minor soreness on the left side of my back, but a smile on my face for getting one over on the summer of 2003. Who knew going to Jersey could be so much fun, even without beers?

Cooper River Driving Range, open every day from 9 a.m.­10 p.m., Route 130 South at the Airport Intersection, 856-486-7694.