If you are looking to learn or improve your golf swing in Manhattan – may we recommend the driving range at Chelsea Piers?

Chelsea Piers offers 2 levels of heated stalls overlooking the Hudson River at 20th Street from which you can drive golf balls into a netted cage for about $100 / hour, prime time.

The biggest pluses here are 1 – the NYC location, 2 – the automated ball service – 3 – the well-equipped Prop Shop from which you can rent an excellent selection of clubs including Mizunos that you can try towards purchase – or just swing.

The facility is well run. There is ample staff that jump to serve. The automated tee-up is a faster – less instructional version of a lesson with your golf pro. And after you can wet your whistle with a tasty fresh ale from Chelsea Brewing Company.

Two negatives apply to taller and better golfers. The driving bays are partitioned from each other with netting and metal columns – both of which are too close for comfort. If you are 5”7” – they will be in your way psychologically, if you are 6”1 – they will be in your way physically. And, the range is 200 yards – at the end of which is netting. If you hit further than 200 yards with a range ball, chances are, you’re a pretty good golfer, and you’ll know whether you are hitting with a fade or a draw – though you won’t have the satisfaction of watching the landing, or gaining the roll.

So regardless of the weather, head on out. Bring a credit card & ask for an outside bay – which will give you the little extra room you need for your driver.

Fore.

Golf as sport has been a bit of an oxymoron for me. Sports for me are physically demanding, heart pounding activities that produce copious amounts of sweat and endorphins. My husband picked up golf as a gift from me for his 40th birthday. A dear friend who is a scratch golfer assured me that my husband would love it, and that he could teach him the game. So one week later, with Titleist clubs in hand – they went out – and it’s been an addiction of his since.

His recommendation that I take up golf seemed silly. A sport played with martini in cart and cigar in hand? But I’ve been seeing lots of beautiful courses from the club house patio, and we no longer play tennis all week-end, and his idea that we go together to hits balls on a sunny afternoon sounded good on several sunny afternoons.

I am beginning to play golf on the range, without the accoutrement of cigar or martini, and with the visuals of Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie in my mind, and I love the feel of the club coming through its arc, and the solid fwack of the driver on the ball.

The golf swing is at first awkward; one shakes hands with the club in a funny way, one sits as if just about to encounter a stool, and extends the club in a full rotation around an arc without swaying or reaching. And you may not pick up your head, or stand up, to see how you have done until you have come through the stroke. Sound like baseball, tennis, polo? It is.

I haven’t yet got round a course – the idea of spending perhaps six hours in total frustration is neither attractive nor feasible at the moment. But driving balls is a nice compliment in the afternoon to a morning’s run, or a little fresh air and stretching on a day of recovery. The rotation of the hips through the ball feels very similar to the twisting poses I practice in yoga – so the golf swing compliments my athletic schedule, which is running / swimming / yoga / pilates, and offers a fun satisfaction of hitting a ball that is more age appropriate than swinging at baseballs, less expensive than swinging a polo mallet, and less demanding than swinging a tennis racquet.

So where can you find a golf swing in Manhattan, or hone your’s low and straight: Chelsea Piers, Drive 495 & Liberty National, in ascending order of ability and $$$.

We are checking out these places, and we’ll post our findings, and welcome your comments.

Cheers.

Where is the Wi-Fi?

Is hoping on an open wireless connection like siphoning gas out of a parked car?

What is going on in town that everyone is using the password protection on their wi-fi connection? It used to be, like two weeks ago, that everywhere you went, you fabulously encountered the Internet. Open Internet connections were ubiquitous.

And now, computer owners have decided that someone “borrowing” your connection is equivalent to your siphoning gas out of their car. This is enormously inconvenient and troublesome to those many many many of us who enjoyed this free wi-fi throughout the city.

There are two issues here -- one is, did I damage any of the people whose connections I rode? Two – if private citizens won’t share, when will the city step in and make wireless the city?

One can organize, or join an organization – nyc wireless.
http://www.nycwireless.net/articles

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has plans to install wi-fi in parks throughout New York over the next 3 years.

Already service exists in Bryant Park, Union Square, Stuyvesant Cove, Tompkins Square Park, and many areas in the Financial District and Battery Park including: World Financial Center, City Hall Park, Wall Street Park, Vietnam Veterans Plaza, Stone Street, Battery Park, Bowling Green, and at 60 Wall Street.

You can check this map for the location nearest you, or get lucky and stumble upon one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/nyregion/16wifi.html?ex=1305432000&en=ecca166f048f3a8f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Or you can head to Starbucks.

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of iphone , which will end the search all together.

Cheers,