Back when I was learning the game of golf, I used to supplement my lessons at Bob-O-Link Golf Course in Avon with stops at various driving ranges. It was kind of fun to hit a bucket of balls on the way home from work – even when the ball sometimes ricocheted around the small stall from where I was driving.
Back then, the driving ranges seemed to be all over the place. I remember one across from the Aqua Marine bowling alley; one on the west side of Abbe Road south of State Route 254; The Range at Avon on Route 83 where the huge shopping center is now near Chester Road; Hillcrest Golf Range in Westlake on Detroit Road; and many more. The aforementioned ones are all gone; the land they were on was too valuable to be used by golfers to practice driving. (I did a post on disappearing golf ranges back here in 2019.)
Add to the list of long-gone driving ranges one that was located in Vermilion: Sunnyside Golf Driving Range. It was located right on U.S. Route 6, just east of Sunnyside Road.
Here's a sampling of ads from over the years. The earliest I could find was from 1950.
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| From the July 28, 1950 Lorain Journal |
Here's the 1952 version of the ad (below). A 1952 aerial from the HistoricAerials.com website is right below it, showing the location of the range. It's strange to see nothing in that area (which today is home to the Vermilion Farm Market) but the driving range.
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| From the May 9, 1952 Lorain Journal |
Here's the 1953 ad.
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| From the April 22, 1953 Lorain Journal |
Here's an ad from the mid-1960s. By then it was
Jonick's Sunnyside Golf Driving Range.
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| From the April 16, 1965 Journal |
And here's a 1969 aerial, courtesy of the HistoricAerials.com website.
By the 1970s, it appears that advertising for the golf range was scaled back, limited to a classified ad listing.
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| From the May 29, 1975 Journal |
I'm not sure, but perhaps it was because the driving range wasn't as an important part of the property any more. The Jonick trucking business had started there in the late 1960s, and the tavern even earlier (dating back to the early 1960s).
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| An ad for the Jonick tavern from the Journal of October 17, 1975 |
By the way, the name 'Jonick' came from the first names of Jo and Nick Morog, who owned the tavern. Their son William began the trucking business in 1968.
