When Rickie Fowler won the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit on July 2, ending a four-year winless drought, the cheers for one of the game’s most popular players could almost be heard from the Murrieta Valley Golf Range, about 90 minutes south of Los Angeles.
That’s where Fowler, 34, first learned the game as a kid. His grandfather, Yutaka, spent every Wednesday with his first grandchild and would take him to the range, which opened, in 1992, and let him whack away. A passion for the game was forged in those natural grass bays in the shadows of the Santa Ana Mountains, and it’s where Fowler spent more and more of his formative years.
“My dad used to deliver the sand for maintenance and gravel for the parking lot in exchange for me to hit balls,” Fowler said.
Thirty years later, Fowler completed a boyhood dream of his, becoming owner of the range earlier this year. In between watching tennis at Wimbledon and playing Sunningdale Golf Club in London with Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas ahead of this week’s Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club, Fowler shared with Golfweek just how much his childhood range meant to him.
“I always wanted the range to be around and it to be open for the next generation,” Fowler wrote in an email. “I wanted kids to have the same opportunity as me if they were interested.”
Bill Teasdall, a former mini-tour player, found the land, leased the 15-acre property and opened the 50-stall range, where 90 balls still cost just $12, and included a teaching area for his best friend, Barry McDonnell.
“When we opened, Barry said to me, ‘Bill, we’ve got the perfect place to practice. Now all I need is a young kid with some talent and I’ll take him all the way to the Tour,’” Teasdall told PGA Tour.com in 2016. “And Rick showed up two months later.”
