Driving Range Opens, Again

The lie of the golf ball found Friday just outside a controversial driving range at Los Angeles City College may have been just that: a lie.

So, Los Angeles Community College District officials conducting a daylong safety test gave the range owner permission to open, despite the discovery of the apparently errant ball.

District administrators had ordered the facility on Melrose Avenue closed temporarily just days after its March grand opening after errant balls hit over the range’s 16-story fence peppered the college campus.

Fearing that someone could be hurt, officials said the range might be shut permanently if even one more ball was found outside the range in the future.

Opponents of the range applauded the shutdown. They have lobbied to have the golf facility, built under a 10-year, $120,000 lease to the district, torn down and used for college purposes.

Range owner Hee Cho switched to low-lift balls and hung strands of webbing over the range in hopes of remedying the problem. Friday was test day as golfers were invited in for free to hit balls as high and as hard as they could as officials watched the range’s perimeter.

All day long, balls rebounded off the overhanging baffles and bounced off the fence 250 yards downrange. But apparently only one ball escaped. It was spotted at 3:30 p.m. next to the college children’s day care center by Priscilla Meckley, facilities planning and development director for the college district.

The ball was just outside the range fence. Meckley got it and took it to Cho for an explanation.

At first he identified it as one of the long-flight balls used before the range’s shutdown. Meckley disagreed after comparing it with a low-flight ball and finding the markings and dimpling on the two identical.

Then Cho suggested that dirt on the ball proved that it was not hit out Friday, because only freshly washed balls were being used for the safety test. Meckley carefully compared it with the washed balls and again was unconvinced.

Finally, Cho ordered several of his range’s teaching pros to try to drive balls past the hanging baffles and over the fence where the mystery ball had been found. They couldn’t hit anything out of the enclosure.

The laws of physics make it impossible for a golf ball to zig-zag through the baffle netting, Cho explained. “It’s not a guided missile,” he said.

Cho, who has suggested that some of the errant balls had been planted, only shrugged when asked if this one might have been. “I cannot say,” he said.

By 6 p.m., 42,700 balls had been hit in the test and no others had been found outside the fence. So Meckley gave Cho his long-coveted tee time. “You can open for business,” she said.

Cho said the $6-million range will be open to the public from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Meckley, however, said it could be ordered closed again if a “documented incident” occurred in which a ball was hit over the fence.