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The Last Open Range
Beach Fairway’s future is bleak, and that’s just bad for golf
 On a cloudy Monday in August in the early evening, the Beach Fairway in Scarborough is buzzing with those attempting to hit a stationary white ball with a club. The Astroturf mats are full of players of all abilities, from Mr. Know-it-All (you know the type—he’s actually a 15-handicap, but is full of swing tips for those around him) to aging veterans of the $1-per hole battles on the local munis, through to teenage boys in muscle shirts trying to impress their dates with their prowess. To say it is a hub of activity would be an understatement.
I drink in the scene and bat a few balls into the netting that protects a nearby grocery store, while coming to the realization that this is one of the last bastions where one can practice golf in the city of Toronto. Driving ranges are where people get addicted to golf, maybe for life. In Toronto, practice facilities are going the way of the dinosaur.
That’s no surprise to Kim Holman, co-owner of Beach Fairway, which is perched between a railway line and a parking lot just north of Toronto’s Beaches community. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the range for Holman and her husband, Brian Jacobsen, a commercial pilot and avid golfer who regularly bemoaned the lack of driving ranges in the city before creating his own. But the couple is aware their facility could well become extinct. It wouldn’t be the first. The downtown facility next to the Rogers Centre that used to have a pitch-and-putt is now the home of condos. Another range on leased city property in Scarborough not far from my home is also gone, turned into housing. That means if you want to hit balls—or even consider smacking a few irons on grass—Beach Fairway is your only option within the central boundaries of Canada’s largest city.
Holman knows all about the fragility of her range’s future. Despite sinking tens of thousands into it (“We used to have thousand-dollar days at the start,” she says, “’Cause every day seemed to cost us another thousand dollars.”) the range is now without a lease from the city of Toronto. That despite putting an average of 60,000 players through their facility each year, paying taxes and employing three golf pros, a handful of full-time and part-time staff, dozens of student ball pickers and others. Even city programs see value in the range, sending kids at summer camps to try their hand at golf for less than a fiver per child.
“The numbers should speak for themselves,” says Holman, who works in marketing while raising her young girls. “But I’m afraid no one is listening.”
The problem is that the range’s lease had expired and no one at the city can say whether it will be renewed. Holman has been trying to find a solution for more than a year, but is caught in an officious haze of indecisive city officials. At least once she’s been told the range would be shut down immediately to house city equipment while nearby roadworks were underway. Other times she’s been told the land would be developed.
Regardless, she and her husband have no sense what the future holds. The recent strike by outside city workers was the latest hiccup delaying any new negotiations, she says, and the couple can’t make any additional investments in the range without knowing how long they’ll be operating. It’s a case of paralysis by bureaucracy.
Holman and her husband would love to pump some more money into the range, add a second level of tee decks and move forward. Instead they are stuck in a holding pattern, and that’s a shame. The game of golf in Canada is treading water. A recent Canadian study showed rounds declined last year by 10 percent. Places like the Beach Fairway are where children learn the game, where teenagers experiment hitting balls and soon find themselves hooked and where adults come to get their fix right into their golden years. Without them one would need a car to travel to the outskirts of the city just to find a place to pound balls.
The game was built in places like the Beach Fairway. Great players found their love of golf on worn artificial turf and hardscrabble fairways. If this one disappears, the game will be poorer for it.
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