New Driving Range to Feature a Course in Water Safety : Golf: Players can target a specific problem in their game at the Anaheim facility.

Hitting a golf ball over a water hazard can be among the most daunting of challenges for a recreational golfer. Usually confident, relatively competent players can become nervous hackers when faced with a tee shot over a lake.

There are those who swear their Top-Flites have some sort of magnetic attraction to the wet stuff.

Golfers hoping to remedy this phobia will have a new resource starting next month--The Islands Golf Center.

“We feel that once you’ve had an opportunity to hit a number of buckets of balls here, hitting over the water won’t be so intimidating,” said David Graf, chief financial officer of Gentry Golf, the company building the center.

“After playing here, Pebble Beach is going to look like a cakewalk.”

That, of course, is doubtful. But regular users of the $1.5-million facility certainly will have plenty of experience hitting over water, because the range is set on a 10-acre lake.

It’s not a unique idea--there are water driving ranges in Florida, North Carolina, Washington, Idaho and even one in Redding, Calif.--but it will be a first for Southern California.

It’s also the fifth range to open in Orange County since May, a boom that can be partly explained by the area’s real estate bust. One, at MacArthur Place in Santa Ana, is on land that is still marked for office buildings. This one is the brainchild of Joseph Dallaire and Graf, both former executives in Southern California residential development companies hurt by the economic slowdown.

A driving range was Dallaire’s idea.

“I would go by practice facilities like Rancho San Joaquin and notice there were always people there,” Dallaire said. “It was always full.”

So the pair, joined by Bill Cathcart, a landscape architect who is also chairman of the planning commission in the City of Orange, and businessmen Michael Lim and Damoi Park created Gentry Golf.

The group located the lake, which is part of the Orange County Water District’s system of retention basins designed to replenish the aquifer, and signed a 10-year lease.

The facility, scheduled to open Labor Day weekend, is set between the 57 Freeway and the Santa Ana River, several blocks north of Anaheim Arena. Four floating islands--really barges camouflaged with bright green artificial turf and palm trees in planters--will provide the targets of various lengths. Buoys will also delineate distances for those times when golfers just want to rip it.

“This is target golf at its best,” Graf said. “It’s not only challenging to try to get on the islands, it’s a lot of fun to watch the golf balls fall into the water.”

And unlike regulation balls, these float. They are pumped with air during the molding process to provide buoyancy. Once in the water, the balls drift with the prevailing wind to the right rear corner of pond, where they will be collected. A pontoon boat will round up any stragglers.

Because they weigh about five grams less than standard golf balls--”the weight of two dimes,” Graf said--the floaters don’t travel as far. In testing that simulated the swing of an average golfer with a driver, a standard ball traveled 193 feet compared to 181 for the floater.

The operators figured that computes to a difference of one club length and plan to adjust the posted lengths to account for the disparity.

Undoubtedly, there will be those who come to the center for the novelty of hitting into the water, but Dallaire said he believes they will come back because of the quality of the facility and the pleasant lakeside environment.

The foundations are being poured this week for the 4,200-square-foot pro shop, which will feature a snack bar and video lesson facility. The shop will be staffed by three PGA class-A professionals and one LPGA professional. There also will be putting and chipping greens.

On the range itself, there will be 90 lighted tees, from which golfers will be able to hit off mats. Prices for buckets of balls will range from $5.50 to $7.

About six weeks after the range opens, the facility’s nine-hole par-18 chipping and putting course will open. It’s an “up-and-down” course and players will hit their first shots from sand traps, uphill and downhill lies.

Everybody Into the Water The Islands Golf Center driving range, first of its kind in Southern California, will help players get over their fear of water. Shots that miss island targets will be easy to retrieve; unlike normal golf balls, the range balls will float. How the Balls Compare If a golf ball were hit at club-head speed of 85 m.p.h. using a driver (simulating the average golfer’s swing), it would have this trajectory: Distance of U.S. Golf Assn.-approved ball: 193 yards Floater: 181 yards Why It Floats Same as USGA-approved ball, except: Weight: About 41 grams (five grams less than USGA ball) Center: Same rubber compound but injected with air during molding process Source: Golf Laboratories