A bucket of range balls will cost you $5 at Rock Hill Golf & Country Club in Manorville, N.Y.—one of the premier public courses on the south shore of Long Island, right before you get to the Hamptons. However, today, the quality of that deal is little comfort to Golf Digest 50 Best Teacher Michael Jacobs, Rock Hill’s head professional and one of the few elite teachers who still handles traditional club-pro duties like stocking the range.
Jacobs is at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando this week, and he’s on the hunt for a replacement supply of balls for the Rock Hill range. He needs 20,000 balls for the upcoming season—13,000 to fill his processing and cleaning machine and 7,000 for backups when the inevitable “shrinkage” from loss, theft and damage starts.
The outlay might make your eyes water as much as it does Jacobs’. The standard Pinnacle you see when you go beat a bucket—the striped one that says PRACTICE in bold letters—costs $9 a dozen. Upgrade to Pro V1 practice balls, and expect to pay $13 a dozen (and an almost certain fate as a victim of range-lifting).
That means Jacobs will spend $15,000 (“plus free shipping, which is important”) to make sure Rock Hill visitors have fresh pellets for their practice sessions. When the golf balls show up, it’s a range rat’s Christmas Day—a Costco-style pallet of 80 250-ball boxes wrapped in plastic.
“We can get t …