Golf outing driving range: how to handle warm-up before a shotgun start

A daily-fee morning feeds the range in a trickle — one group warms up, tees off, and the next drifts in behind it. A shotgun outing does the opposite. Fifteen minutes before the horn, your entire field wants the same hitting bays at the same time, and the golf outing driving range turns from a quiet amenity into the morning's first bottleneck. Whether the range helps your day or jams it comes down to a handful of decisions you make before anyone arrives: who gets balls, how many, when the range closes, and how you clear a hundred players off it in time to get them to their holes. Handle it well and the field starts loose and on schedule. Handle it badly and your shotgun goes off late with half the field still cold.

Should a golf outing include the driving range?

Short answer: yes, almost always — but on your terms, not the field's. A warm-up is part of what players expect from an organized event, and a loose, happy field plays better and complains less. The real question is never whether to open the range; it is how to open it so it speeds the morning up instead of slowing it down. That means setting the hours, the ball allotment, and the hard close time in advance, and treating the range as a scheduled station in the day rather than an open-ended courtesy. A range with no closing time is the single easiest way to push a shotgun start past the horn.

How many range balls does a shotgun field need?

Plan a warm-up bucket per player, not a practice session. The point of an outing warm-up is to loosen up and find a swing, not to grind for an hour, so a small bucket — enough for ten or fifteen minutes of hitting — is the right size for the whole field. Decide whether range balls are included in the package or sold separately, print that decision on the registration confirmation, and stage the baskets before the first car pulls in. The two things that create a range logjam are running out of balls mid-rush and making players stop at a counter to pay one at a time. Pre-stage enough baskets for your full field, fold the cost into the entry fee where you can, and the line disappears before it forms.

How to run the golf outing driving range on event morning

The range is a station, so run it like one:

1. Open it with check-in, not before. Players who arrive early should be able to warm up as soon as they have their cart assignment. Tie the range opening to when registration opens so the two flow together instead of fighting each other.
2. Set a hard close time and announce it. The range closes long enough before the horn for players to get to their holes — for a shotgun, that is the time it takes your farthest group to drive out, plus a cushion. Post it, say it, and mean it.
3. Give a warning before the close. A single "ten minutes to range closing, please head to your carts" over a horn or bullhorn moves a field better than any sign ever will.
4. Stage the short game too. If you have a practice green and a chipping area, point players to them. Spreading the field across range, green, and chipping area keeps any one spot from jamming at the rush.
5. Clear it deliberately. Someone — a starter, a volunteer, the pro — sweeps the range at the close and nudges stragglers along. The last player still hitting is the reason the horn is late.

Where warm-up fits in the morning timeline

The range only works if the rest of the morning gives it room. That means doors and registration open a full hour before the horn, carts are staged and assigned, and players can move check-in → range → cart → hole without backtracking. The warm-up is one piece of the larger job of getting a full field staged and rolling on time, which is the same discipline behind how you set up your course for a golf outing in the first place — tees, pins, carts, and the range all pointed at the same goal of launching everyone cleanly at one horn. Because a shotgun start has no give, the range close time is not a soft suggestion; it is load-bearing.

Make the range the easy part

The range rarely fails because of the grass — it fails because the plan lived in three people's heads and nobody told the field. Put the warm-up details where the day lives: range hours and ball policy on the registration confirmation, the close time on the printed schedule, the staging plan in the hands of your starter and volunteers. That is the kind of coordination Greenside Golf is built to hold, so the pieces of the morning line up instead of colliding. Set the hours, size the buckets, call the close — and the range does exactly what it is supposed to do: send a loose, on-time field to the first horn.