Golf Range Magazine - not to be confused with Soccer Practice Fields International - just named the PGA Learning Center one of the Top 100 golf ranges in America.

Sorry, Golf Range, but the list both starts and ends with the PGA Learning Center.

It’s the only worthwhile practice center in the world. Most practice venues/ranges are simply places to be endured until you can get out on the course. PGA Learning Center is actually in better condition than many golf courses and full of things that will keep your mind engaged rather than beaten down by the monotony of pounding golf balls.

Take the nine full practice bunkers with nine different types of sand. If you want to simulate golf in Dubai, you can do it here.

The PGA Learning Center is full of young golfers too. And I don’t mean young by golf’s standards - most of my playing partners think I’m young, but that’s because they almost all end up being older than George Burns. No, I’m talking real-world young - guys and girls even younger than our own Brandon Tucker (and BTuck still gets carded at movie theaters, he’s pissed about being denied Saw III.)

It’s almost a golf epiphany. There are all these college-aged kids from around the world (a number of young golfers from Europe move to Florida just to practice here during the cold-winter months) working on their games and talking to each other. You’ve never seen so many iPods.

It helps that the prices are ridiculously reasonably ($20 for a full day in which you can leave and come back to the Learning Center as often as you please or $75 for a weeklong pass). It doesn’t hurt that it’s open till 10 p.m. every day too (there are tons of lighted areas on the 35 acres), so that young golfers whose bodies aren’t conditioned to rise at 5 a.m. every day and go to sleep by 8 p.m. actually have a place to go.

I hate to practice and even I loved the PGA Learning Center.

It’s worth a trip to Port St. Lucie to experience. And not just if new New York Met Johan Santana is in town. And that’s saying something.

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