New Yorkers get in the swing with celebrities : Teeing off at portraits of Letterman, Madonna and Trump adds to the fun for golfers at a driving range.

Maybe there is something inherent in the psyche of New Yorkers that makes it enjoyable hitting David Letterman, Madonna, Donald Trump and George Steinbrenner on the head with golf balls.

If Sigmund Freud had swung a five-iron, he might have said it’s exercise for the id--that repository of aggressive drives and fantasies residing in us all--particularly in the minds of put-upon, chronically harassed New Yorkers.

In the latest innovation of a burgeoning business, the operators of a New York golf driving range have placed portraits of the show business celebrities, the real estate developer and bellicose Yankees team owner as targets to be struck.

At first there was shock.

“Nobody had seen anything like that, and it did create quite a stir,” said Berne Finch, assistant manager of the Randalls Island Golf and Family Entertainment Center, just across the East River from Manhattan. “I was a bit apprehensive myself, but it has been pretty well received. I am pleasantly surprised by the way it turned out. I hit at them myself.”

Is there something in the personality of New Yorkers that brings added enjoyment to golf when there are targets to hit?

“Oh yes,” Finch answered. “I think Madonna is the one most people want to pepper.”

Andrew Berkowitz, 26, who works in promotion for Arista Records, held a handful of clubs and said he liked hitting Trump, not Madonna. “Trump does nothing but cause problems for the city,” Berkowitz contended.

“I aim straight for David Letterman because he is strategically placed right in front of me,” added Hilde Jenssen, a Wall Street securities analyst, interrupting swings with her driver. “It means I am hitting it straight. . . . I hit him a couple of times.”

How did it feel? “Wonderful.”

According to the National Golf Foundation, 24.3 million Americans play golf, and a growing number practice at driving ranges. Officials of the Manhattan-based Golf Range and Recreational Assn. estimate 2,100 stand-alone ranges that are not attached to golf courses exist in the United States, and the number is growing by almost 10% a year.

“There has been a large upsurge in the last couple of years as more people enter the game and people’s schedules get tighter,” said Steven J. di Costanzo, the association’s executive director and founder. “They have less time to spend playing full rounds of golf because of family and work commitments. Ranges provide that outlet for golf, for practice and learning.”

“Golf is just so big right now in the United States and all over the world,” said Tom Nieporte, head professional at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., site of the 1997 Professional Golf Assn. championship. “I just think there are so many people getting interested in golf and there are very few public golf courses around. A lot of people want to play the game and there is no place to hit balls. That’s why driving ranges are growing right now.”

Di Costanzo said local lore has it that the first driving range in the United States was built at Pinehurst, N.C., about the turn of the century. It was called Maniac Hill.

But the days when an entrepreneur merely mowed a field and put up yardage markers, netting to stop balls and some lights now are fading. Ranges, particularly in urban areas, are becoming multilevel, high-tech family centers with putting greens, sand traps, miniature golf courses and batting cages for baseball enthusiasts.

Borrowing technology from ranges in Japan, computerized systems using conveyor belts or pneumatic tubes bring balls to tees, which often are heated for winter practice. Some ranges give golfers the feeling that they are playing a course by hitting to replicas of famous holes. Clubhouses also are designed golf-course style.

The marketing of driving ranges is becoming sophisticated. In the suburbs of Cleveland, the Range stages promotions with WKNR, a local radio station. Sports talk show hosts broadcast from the driving range. The facility also is the site of a local celebrity closest-to-the-pin contest sponsored by WKYC, which is NBC-TV’s Cleveland affiliate. Challengers aim at a replica of the difficult 17th-hole island green at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, Fla.--a stop on the regular pro tour.

A private shuttle bus from the East Side of Manhattan runs to the Randalls Island Golf and Entertainment Center, where eight-foot-tall targets of a sultry-eyed Madonna, Letterman smiling with a big cigar, Steinbrenner looking tough and Trump with a haircut resembling a bird’s nest greet golfers.

Somehow, hitting the caricatures seems appropriate. “They [New Yorkers] are very up-front, very forward, almost brutally truthful,” said Finch, who previously worked at a golf course in California. “They will let you know if they don’t like something. In California, they will skirt the issue a bit more.”