A positive attitude, an enduring dream of a golf-industry career and natural people skills enabled John Kruczek to transform a ramshackle Illinois range into the 2006 winner of Golf Range Times’ Best New Range Award.

A do-it-yourselfer of the first order, Kruczek bought Evergreen Driving Range in October 2004, rolled up his shirtsleeves and quickly got to work rebuilding his dream coming true. Kruczek—who sold supplies to automotive paint and body shops for 23 years before becoming a range owner—had aspired to build a range from scratch but settled on purchasing the Evergreen. As it turned out, he virtually got his wish—nearly starting from scratch.

Now, Kruczek’s T-Time Range & Family Fun Center in Homer Glen, Ill., is not only a refurbished, thriving facility, but also a comeback story worthy of winning Golf Range Times’ annual competition.

“I have a sign hanging here that says, ‘We started with nothing, and we’ve got most of it left,’” Kruczek laughs. “We really did start this place with nothing, and I think that has been the toughest part. We’ve come a long way.”

What Kruczek did have were 10 acres of land 25 miles south of Chicago. He also had a rundown tee line and poorly landscaped landing area, not to mention a dilapidated miniature golf course covered with weeds and a dandelion-filled putting green. Plus—the finishing touch—a trailer for a clubhouse.

Basically, he had a lot of work to do.

But hard work has never scared Kruczek. He’s the kind of guy who looks at the tee line as half full all the time. “The thing that helped us is the place had been there,” he says. “It’s an ongoing business, so we had a little clientele, and we’ve been able to bring people back by what we’ve done.”

During the past two years, Kruczek has applied a little tender, loving care and a lot of his own sweat to the facility. All the while, he has kept his day job as a salesman for CY South Suburban Body Shop Supplies, located near T-Time in Orland Park, Ill. Kruczek works nights and weekends at his range, which adds up to “a lot of 18-hour days,” he admits.

“I’ve slept here a few times,” Kruczek confesses. “Anyone in this business knows how that goes. You have to get the balls up after you close, sleep a few hours and then get out there and cut the range at 5 a.m. for the next day, if you want to be a reputable range.”

Thanks to that work ethic, T-Time Range & Family Fun Center is already much more than simply reputable.

Just Do It
Kruczek had long daydreamed of some sort of career in the golf industry. Until a few years ago, he thought it would be running a golf store. In 2003, a friend of his was opening such a store in Arizona. Convinced the Arizona store held his opportunity for golf-industry glory, Kruczek sold his house, set to head southwest.

Ultimately, loyalty to his body-shop supplies boss and friend, John Young, kept Kruczek in Illinois. Yet Kruczek and his wife, Kathy, still were looking for something special to do as they entered their 40s, and golf still seemed like the best option. The Kruczeks ordered the Forecast Golf Group’s book “Developing Your Golf Range,” and began considering that segment of the golf industry.

Kruczek took learning about golf ranges a step further by working part-time for about three months at nearby White Mountain Driving Range. Another friend, Ryan Ludwig, ran the pro shop there and got Kruczek in the door with then-owner Ray Rapollo. Kruczek worked, watched and absorbed everything he could at the facility, which was closing and being sold to the Billy Casper Group for a later reopening.

“I hadn’t thought much about opening a driving range, to be honest,” Kruczek says. “But Ryan really opened my eyes. He said his pro shop had instant business from day one because of the range. That helped make my decision for me.”

Kruczek alerted his realtor to keep an eye out for the right property, which is what brought the Kruczeks to the Evergreen facility. “I thought it was the perfect area,” Kruczek remembers. “It was outside a town that was growing, just like the book (“Developing Your Golf Range”) recommended you look for.”

Kruczek dedicated eight months to developing a business plan to make his dream come true. When he made the pitch for a loan at the local bank, Kruczek was so excited and so passionate that the banker told him that was the main reason he decided to grant the loan. Kruczek purchased the facility for $800,000.

Even before the final papers were signed, Kruczek made his presence known at Evergreen, coming in, chatting up some of the regular customers and getting a head start on the massive cleanup the facility needed. He officially took over in October 2004 and soon shut the facility down for the winter to make more repairs.

“The very first thing I did was knock down the fence around the miniature golf course and go after those three-foot weeds,” Kruczek recalls. “There was a lot of cleaning we had to do. There were mosquito beds everywhere, and our (putting) green was full of dandelions. It was not a pretty sight.”

Kruczek was disappointed in how much time he had to devote to off-the-range concerns that first year. He spent a lot of time at city hall in discussions about special-use permits for the new clubhouse building he wanted to add. He also talked to the fire department about sprinkler systems and to the water department about sewers.

“The more I talked, the more the costs kept going up,” Kruczek laughs. “The fire department told me if I just stayed where I was at (in terms of buildings), I was fine. So then we just shifted our plans into remodeling what we had instead of building something new.”

A past owner—one of many former owners who had tried to make the driving range a success—told Kruczek he was foolish for buying the facility. Kruczek didn’t care.

“It’s just something I really wanted, and it feels good to have taken the step,” Kruczek said. “I told my wife either we do it or we don’t. I don’t want to have regrets later that I didn’t try.”

A Fresh Start
Kruczek wisely began disassociating T-Time from previous incarnations of the facility. More than 30 years old, Evergreen already had seen more owners than Kruczek, a lifelong golfer and area resident, could remember. While Kruczek kept many of the old employees on staff, he also wanted—and implemented—changes.

“I told them if they had it red here before, then I wanted to paint it blue,” he says. “I didn’t want anything to do with any of the past stuff. I took out all the green (for Evergreen) and put in fresher colors.”

Kruczek trusted his own instincts. The first major improvements he made were to the front of the facility by redoing walkways, signage and the look of the clubhouse; building a new deck; and putting up new siding on the trailer and adjacent maintenance building.

Kruczek added a window to the trailer once his new batting cages opened the first full season. It became a place where batting-cage customers could come to quickly pick up tokens and easily head over to the cages. The window creates an informal separation between the golf traffic and the batting cages, an important distinction, notes Kruczek.

“I wanted to separate the two,” he says. “The batting cages are up front here, and the golf is around back. My main business is still golf, so this seemed like the best way to illustrate that.”

Golfers enter the clubhouse to purchase tokens, and they get a bucket that they walk out the back door and into a nearby room in the maintenance building that houses a Range Servant dispenser.

“This setup gives us the opportunity for a little customer service, which is big for us—meeting everybody and shaking a lot of hands,” Kruczek explains. “I just think there’s got to be a personal touch in this kind of business. I probably do too much of that stuff, but I enjoy it and I feel strongly about it.”

Kruczek estimates the old range did approximately $19,000 in business in the three or four months he was keeping a close eye on the facility. “That really wasn’t enough to pay anything,” he says, shaking his head. “We had five times that the first year we were open, and then last year it really exploded over that. We’ve done enough to pay the bills, but it’s a growing business, and the compliments we hear every day make me very optimistic.”

Old customers appreciate the fresh new look and commitment to customer service. New customers just find a quality place to hit golf balls and practice their game. Those newer customers may never realize all the work that has gone into making it seem as though T-Time has always looked and operated this way.

Kruczek and one of his top employees, Neil Rago, upped the golf ball inventory themselves, handpicking over 30,000 balls imbedded in the range. T-Time lived off that refurbished inventory for two seasons, but now Kruczek and Rago are planning on overhauling the lot, leaning towards Srixon.

Srixon gave Kruczek 20 dozen boxes, and Kruczek has been using them on the tee line, having customers test drive them for him and then getting their opinions. This process is an excellent way to build loyalty from those customers and just to get more time talking with them. But it’s not merely part of some marketing scheme; Kruczek really cares what his patrons think.

“To me, any improvement we make is a reflection on our name and reputation,” he adds. “And that’s what I base my business around, having that kind of reputation in the community. It’s anything I can do, from cutting and weed-whacking to keep the place nice to meeting and greeting. I think we can ‘out-service’ other places with that kind of attitude.”


Getting Over the Hump
Chris Parker, the 21-year-old de facto manager at T-Time, has that attitude too. Kruczek met him when Parker was apprentice to the superintendent at White Mountain. Kruczek lured Parker over to T-Time at the beginning when he was seeking help with the grass and grounds. Since then, Parker has picked up Kruczek’s pesticides license to handle that end of the operation, and he has been integral to the management of the revamped range from his first day.

“Chris doesn’t have hours—he just comes in and does what needs to be done,” says Kruczek. “He walked in the place the first day and picked up a piece of paper off the ground, treating the place like it was his own.”

And since that first day, Parker was telling Kruczek they had to get rid of a small ridge all the way across the landing area at 60 yards out. The hill was so bad that any balls hit 60 to 120 yards weren’t visible from the tee line when they landed. Parker kept badgering Kruczek about the problem, and by the end of the first year, when Parker asked if he should just run across the street to the rental store to get a tractor, Kruczek agreed.

“I had a little Kubota tractor and (Parker) had a Bobcat, and we went out there and started tearing out the hill,” Kruczek says. “It’s $250 for the rental, so we pulled an all-nighter and got it done.”

Kruczek and Parker re-seeded some Kentucky bluegrass and touched up several other areas, making the range much more user-friendly heading into this past year. Mowing regularly has made a difference too, according to Kruczek. Before, the grass was so dense, pickers couldn’t even penetrate the grass to get the balls, and most of the work was done by human hand. Those days are over.

Kruczek and Parker also inserted drain tile into the landing area to improve drainage and put up new target signs. Vastly improving the targets and the target greens is another item on Kruczek’s to-do list. On the tee line, Kruczek already has introduced new dividers for each station on the 48-station asphalt line and has replaced all the mats with a combination of SoftTee and Challenger mats. Last spring, Kruczek added a 62-foot CoverShots canopy that covers seven tees and provides all-weather availability for T-Time customers.

On the miniature golf course, Kruczek and Parker tore out the antiquated windmills and weatherworn props and brought in local Beary Landscaping to give the small course a new look, heavy on shrubbery and decorative gravel. The area also features two fountains. New balls and putters add to the appeal.

The area from the back of the clubhouse to the tee line has become a showplace for the facility. Kruczek was so pleased with a local contractor that worked on his house that he hired the same contractor to add a back deck and improve the handicap access to the clubhouse. Meanwhile, Beary paved the area off the deck with bricks and added rose bushes on the perimeter. A wishing well there collects money used to benefit U.S. troops and their families, a charity coordinated by Kathy Kruczek.

The resulting look of the area is worthy of any country club. All told, Kruczek estimates he has poured $400,000 into renovations at T-Time, and he’s not done yet.

“I wish I had more money and I could do everything I want to faster,” he says. “We’re putting most of our money back into (the facility) to enhance it for our customers.”

Kruczek says a key to successfully getting into the golf range business is being adaptable. He originally wanted a new clubhouse with a two-deck tee line, an artificial turf landing area and a completely new lighting system. The lighting and landing changes may still come.

Kruczek already has restored his clubhouse but, again, not as he first planned. He had hoped to replace some doors and fixtures in the clubhouse last winter but instead gutted the inside and totally redid the look to make it more pleasant. A new paved parking lot with 48 spaces is coming this spring, and next on his list is integrating a more structured junior golf program.

With 24 golf courses within a 15-mile radius, T-Time can’t compete with the course access those facilities offer, but Kruczek wants to strike a deal with a nearby course to set up a program of 12 weeks of training at T-Time and then rounds on the course, the optimal teaching situation, he believes.

Even with the success T-Time has enjoyed thus far, Kruczek still sees much room for improvement. “I’m looking at the numbers, and we’ve got 35 stalls for golf, and we’ve got all ages there,” he says. “The average sale for a golfer is $7. At our batting cages, I’ve got eight stalls and the average sale is $5 per customer, and I’m doing nearly as much business in batting as in golf.”

Kruczek thinks part of the problem is the poor reputation the facility had in the past among golfers. He’s still battling that image, though he is winning that war and picking up influential supporters for what he has already achieved in his remarkable reclamation.

“It’s amazing what he has already done there,” Russ Petrizzo, mayor of Homer Glen, observes. “He has completely turned that place around and really made it something just perfect for our community. It really shows what enthusiasm can do.”