Golf Country is a hugely successful golf center built on hard work and soft serve. Owner Jon Nekoroski inherited the family work ethic from his father, George, who passed the center on to his son in the mid-1990s. Ice cream-making wasn’t in the family genes. That cool capability belongs to the famous dairy farm next door, which draws customers from all over the greater Boston area to small Middleton, Mass.

First opened in the 1950s as Middleton Golf Range, Golf Country has slowly and steadily added amenities and become a model golf range, parlaying parfaits and a great location into a regional fixture for family fun. The prime golf and recreation destination offers 70 tees, two separate miniature golf courses, a batting cage and, just across the driveway, world-famous Richardson’s Ice Cream.

Ice cream lovers come from near and far and are easily coaxed out to the driving range and miniature golf course, just watching others have fun. More serious golfers can enjoy the practice time on the range and end their session with an ice cream cone.

It’s a marvelous meeting of taste buds and tees.

The Nekoroski family began leasing the old dairy farm land in 1978, and slowly set about building a recreational landmark as tasty as the historic dairy and ice cream shop next door. The Nekoroskis have been so successful in the driving range business that there will soon be three Golf Country centers in the region. They took over a second range in nearby Easton two years ago, and are currently in negotiations to buy a facility in Saugus, another Boston area North Shore community, and reflag it as a third Golf Country site.

The Nekoroski family formula is simple: Work hard and give customers what they want, a lesson patriarch George passed along to his six children, and especially youngest son Jon, who decided to take over the family golf range business when he had the opportunity.

Jon grew up on the Middleton range and after college stayed around to help his dad run the facility. Today, he and his oldest brother Rick (who handles much of the business end of the two and, soon, three facilities) keep their father’s dreams alive, and perhaps even beyond what he had ever envisioned.

“It’s been a work in progress since we first got it in 1978,” says Jon. “And I think that’s a great way to do it. A lot of places, they go in and spend $3 million before they even know what they’ve got. They might think they’ve got a good location, but here, we knew and we just took our time, putting in one thing at a time.”

A Mom-and-Pop Range Redone
The Nekoroski family’s golf odyssey began with George’s love for the game, growing up in Salem, Mass. Out of high school, he opened his own landscaping business and, to keep the cash flowing in the winter, he started a heating oil delivery service. One of his heating oil customers was Middleton Golf Range, a modest 16-tee range in quaint Middleton, a 17-minute drive north of Boston.

George had become friends with Lenny Cormier, the owner at that time, who had confided to George that he wanted to get out of the business. Never one to shy away from work, particularly when it involved golf, George jumped at the chance to add a driving range to his growing business concerns.

The Richardson family, owner of the four-generation-old Richardson’s Farms Inc., had opened the ice cream shop in 1952, and a year later added the range as another way to drum up business for the dairy. When the Nekoroskis purchased the facility in 1978, signing a one-year land lease with the Richardsons for $1,000, they inherited a true mom-and-pop facility “with no lights, a trash barrel of golf balls and really that was it,” says Jon, laughing at the memory.

“We had black mats back then that were made out of old tires,” he adds. “Every time you’d swing your wooden club, the whole underneath of the club would be black. It ruined your club.”

Then 10 years old, Jon remembers going to the range that first year in the morning with his four brothers and picking up range balls from the field, long before the Nekoroskis had a cart to help them. “Once you finished, you opened up, and once you ran out of balls, you closed up,” he says. “That’s how it was that first year.”

But the Nekoroskis took to the business, signing a second one-year lease in 1979, and then committing for 10 years in 1980. In the meantime, Middleton seemed to flourish. Restaurants and upscale communities began to develop along Route 114 where the range is located. The Nekoroskis added lights to the range in 1980, and by 1990, were confident enough to make major renovations, redesigning the range and adding a miniature golf course.

“The whole direction of the driving range changed,” says Jon of that year. “We went from a little 16-tee driving range to a 50-tee driving range with a pro shop and 18-hole miniature golf. We knew we had a great location and we knew how to market ourselves.”

In 1994, the family added a grass hitting area of 20 tees and a nine-station batting cage and extended the parking lot. By 1998, 16 covered, heated tees were added, and by 2000, a second miniature golf course was designed and constructed by Harris Miniature Golf Courses Inc. (The Nekoroskis designed and built the first course on their own with the aid of a local construction company.)

Love and Something Else Is in the Air
“Miniature golf next to that historic ice cream is so popular on the North Shore,” says Jon. “We have write-ups in the paper about people falling in love at the ice cream shop while playing miniature golf. It’s a place for dates, that’s for sure.”

Part of the lease agreement with the Richardsons is that the golf facility won’t open a restaurant or snack bar to compete with the ice cream shop’s offerings. That’s no problem when potential golf customers are coming from Boston and points farther for the ice cream and the quiet, rustic setting. The range faces a wooded area in the distance, lending that country feel, and the miniature golf is only “about 20 steps” across a driveway to the ice cream shop.

In addition to watching golfers practice and miniature golf players try their luck, folks at the ice cream store like to see the huge Holsteins and their calves in the field behind the dairy. But where there are cows…well, there are also certain smells downwind.

“People like to drive 15 minutes out of Boston and be in the country,” says Jon. “You take a big whiff and you can tell we’re on a dairy farm. But I think that helps people feel like they’re out in the country. You eat an ice cream, hit a bucket, play miniature golf and if you have a good experience, the next time you smell cow manure, no matter where you are, you’ll think of us.”

Jon says that’s all part of the facility’s “mystique,” but admits it’s really not that bad; it’s just a natural part of having a 16-acre golf facility as part of a 3,000-acre dairy farm. “There’s no question the ice cream shop really enhances our business, but we really enhance theirs too,” he says. “We really have a great working relationship.”

But Nekoroski knows his facility thrives from what he calls “the ice cream crowd,” customers who come out for the ice cream and are curious about the golf. He estimates 50 percent of his market are non-golfers. “We probably have 20 dozen drivers get broken a year, those [aluminum cast] ones that can’t be broken,” says Jon. “It’s people who come to eat the ice cream and decide they want to hit a golf ball.”

He recalls when one couple, who was visiting from another country, wandered over from the ice cream shop wanting to buy a bucket of balls to hit, so Jon explained to the husband what people were doing and gave him a right-handed club with his bucket.

“He goes out there and starts hitting left-handed, so I wave his wife over and give her a lefty driver,” he says. “And she starts hitting lefty with the righty driver. In the shop, we didn’t know what to do after that. We just decided to let them finish their bucket.”

Jon says there’s even been customers, unfamiliar with the game, who get a bucket and take it and a driver over to the miniature golf course and start hitting there.

At nights, the facility also draws a lot of teenagers, some on dates and some just looking for a place to hang out. The local paper has labeled the facility and the ice cream shop a great place for parents to drop off their kids while they go have dinner.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Richardson’s and Golf Country hire a security guard to patrol the whole area and just to lend an authoritative presence, even though there haven’t been any serious problems.

“From 7 in the morning to 7 at night, it’s all just regular golfers, 80 percent of the people coming in bringing their own clubs,” says Jon. “We do pretty well, but from 8 p.m. to 11, we actually make just as much money, and only 30 percent of those people have their own clubs.”

Golf clubs are provided for free and on most busy summer nights, Jon says the tee line will be full “and you’ll only see five or six golf bags on the tee line; the rest are ours.

“It’s a great place to bring a date. For 20 bucks you can get ice cream, hit a bucket or play miniature golf. We get a lot of teenagers and people who start out just coming for an ice cream,” he says.

Hard Work Makes It Work
There’s a lot more to operating a successful golf range, and opening up two more, than having great ice cream next door. For Golf Country, it’s about living up to that work ethic George established in his kids long ago.

“He worked hard his whole life,” says Jon of his father. “I don’t know how he did it. He was here basically day and night at the driving range. He had the oil business, the landscaping business. He had a lot going on at once.”

Something must have passed on to those Nekoroski kids, though. Oldest sister Jill owns a polo pony farm in South Carolina. Brothers Matt and Rob started their own medical manufacturing company, and Andy took over the oil business. Oldest brother Rick is a commercial lender and stays active in the driving range business.

Jon doesn’t downplay the success reaped by hard work, but says the Middleton range took off because there are so many golfers in the region and very few driving ranges. Most of the public courses don’t have ranges, and the ones that do are rarely lighted at night.

He also credits his father’s love for golf as a driving force behind the driving range. “We’re true golfers,” he says. “We’re almost like perfectionists when it comes to golf. We know people want a good experience. So when people come to our driving range, they know what they’re going to get.”

What customers get when they walk in the door is top-flight customer service from the four-person staff (it jumps to 12 in the summer with more part-time help), and an unyielding commitment to quality and cleanliness.

Jon patrols the tee line himself most days, picking up the empty buckets and cigarette butts and making sure everyone is hitting and happy. It’s a tangible commitment his employees pick up on, too. There’s no task on the range too small for the owner to perform, so everyone helps pitch in.

A typical day has Jon at Golf Country at 7:30 a.m. (in the winter, shoveling snow from the walkways and the perimeter of the landing area), and he often works until 10:30 at night.

“One of the things I really believe is that if you want things done right, you almost have to do it yourself,” he says. “Being there all the time, I know 90 percent of our customers by name. We get a lot of repeat customers and they know they can count on me.”

Jon, who has visited many other ranges, is amazed at how some other owners operate. “Every time I go to a different driving range, I’ll ask for the owner, and so often the owner’s not around,” he says. “To be honest with you, you have to be there. It’s a business where you have to be on site. We’re very hands on.”

Change at the Range
Jon began putting his imprint on the facility even when he and his father were sharing managerial duties. When George took over in 1978, he decided the golf retail end of the business was too “risky,” and he chose to go with just the basics of gloves, balls and hats and stay out of the high-ticket items. The pro shop was expanded during the major renovation in 1990, and Jon slowly began increasing the volume of offerings available on the retail side.

By 1994, when Jon took over, a full line of Titleist products was made available, along with more clothing, especially from fun New England-based Life is Good, among other products. Jon says most of his sales are still golf gloves, as many as 50 dozen a year, but he likes having a more complete line of products to help the “golf feel and increase opportunities to talk to customers.”

Pro shop sales account for less than 1 percent of the facility’s income, and that’s OK because so many of the other revenue streams are flowing so well. By 1991, Jon had taken the front pro shop doorway and converted it to a window. “We had so many people waiting in the shop waiting for a bucket of balls, it was overwhelming,” he says. “It’s a little unusual but now when you walk in, the buckets are right there on the windowsill and you hand them a bucket and they go right to the tee. If they want to come into the shop, they just come around to the back door. It’s much more convenient for everyone.”

Jon estimates that 95 percent of range customers use the window. Because of the arrangement with the dairy, there’s no snack bar or dining area. Drink vending machines are available, though. For birthday parties, a local restaurant can deliver pizzas and, of course, desert is always right next door.

Golf Country is ideally situated for such gatherings and averages about five parties a weekend in season, according to Jon. “For one price, we can offer a round of miniature golf, buckets at the driving range and tokens at the batting cage,” he says. “And there’s a picnic area by the miniature golf with picnic tables near the ice cream shop and by their petting area [for the calves].”

The ice cream shop and the golf range often combine to serve groups that come out to play on the range and tour the dairy, sometimes even learning how ice cream is made. Students and summer campers regularly make the trek. A group of more than 300 children from Project Learn, in Lynn, Mass., are scheduled to take the tour and play on the range in July, for just $2 per person.

Miniature golf is nearly as attractive a draw as the ice cream. Play on the first course reached a fever pitch about 1995. Customers would often wait 20 minutes just to get on the miniature golf course, Jon recalls.

“We’d literally have people coming off the course and we’d take their club and hand it to someone waiting to get on,” he says. “It was crazy. It’s still like that every nice day in the summer. On those days, we could use a third course.”

Jon says people prefer to play when it’s crowded, the pace slowing them down and giving them time to talk and enjoy their own group. “You don’t want to zip around,” he says. “It’s more of a social event when it’s slower.”

The batting cage, added in 1994, is similarly laid back. “We don’t get the hard-core baseball and softball players, just people who like to try it out,” Jon says.

In the small, adjacent stand where would-be hitters purchase their tokens, they can also buy caps and batting gloves, and that’s the area where the serious golfers purchase buckets for the nearby grass teeing area. The setup works well, and the batting cage, while accounting for less than 10 percent of the facility’s total business, has still been popular.

“We opened the cages and it wasn’t too long after, I’m calling up and ordering more tokens and more balls,” says Jon. “I’m selling over 1,000 tokens a day and they tell me selling 500 is good. The batting cage has paid for itself many times over.”

A Personal and Personnel Touch
Such success opened the door on the purchase of the Easton site, which the Nekoroskis first leased in 2003 and then bought for $2.2 million last year. Part of the decision to take over another range was that Jon’s right-hand man at Middleton, Joe Maney, who had started as a part-time summer employee six years ago, was ready to run the facility.

Such loyalty is part of the way the Nekoroskis do business. They don’t use ball dispensers, not only to increase contact with customers but because Jon simply believes he doesn’t need them. “Some owners say you use them to decrease theft, but I’m not going to steal from myself and I only have employees who I trust,” he says. “We do things a little differently the way we manage. And I don’t want a customer to give me $10 and I give him a token. I want to hand him a nice, clean bucket of balls, smile and say, ‘Thank you.’ I think those little things go a long way.”
Generally, Jon thinks fewer mechanical operations to break down and to maintain are a better way to go. “Sometimes you only get to deal with your customer 20 seconds,” he says. “You want to make that time count, give them something.”

Golf Country does give customers something. In addition to personal service, there’s a lot of bang for the buck. A weekday morning special from 7 to 11 offers customers’ unlimited balls to hit for $10, frequent golfers get a free bucket after every 10 purchased and there’s an annual raffle for a golf trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Golf Country is also known as a major philanthropic entity throughout the region, annually giving away thousands of dollars in certificates and services to local charities. And Jon personally runs a yearly miniature golf tournament to benefit the local neurofibromatosis foundation, a charity benefiting the major bone disease.

“We’ve got a good name in the community,” he says. “People know us and know we stand for quality, and that’s been a big help in opening new places. People get excited when they hear we’re coming.”

And that’s even without the ice cream.