For the Penn men's golfers, practice always starts with a long drive. But not the kind of drive you're thinking of. Without traffic, they can be at the team's home course to practice in thirty minutes. With traffic, who knows?
And in the winter, when they can only use some camera equipment, a mat and a net, it's not easy to work on course management, unless you trust the accuracy of Pottruck's simulator.
It might sound like a raw deal, but it's exactly what the members of the Penn men's golf team signed up for when they agreed to come to Philadelphia.
And not only are they making the most of it, they are excelling - the Quakers took home the Ivy League Championship last spring.
But with a lack of facilities, a cold-weather climate and a home course in the suburbs, recruiting prospective golfers and keeping the current ones sharp and on the team is an interesting challenge for head coach Francis Vaughn.
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Last year, Penn hit the jackpot when it reeled in Chance Pipitone, a junior All-American honorable-mention competitor from Houston.
Though he had never previously lived up north, the magna cum laude graduate of Strake Jesuit could not pass on the promise of a Wharton education.
The chance to practice at the exclusive and nationally renowned Philadelphia Cricket Club - Penn's home course - was also enticing.
And for a season, Pipitone delivered everything for which Vaughn - then an assistantcoach - and then-head coach Rob Powelson could have hoped, leading the team in stroke average to help secure the league title.
It only got better at the NCAA Regional, when he fired a 65 and a 67, Penn's only two sub-70 rounds of the season. He was the stud of Penn golf.
But for Pipitone, the poor weather conditions and the distance from the course made it difficult to focus on both golf and school as much as he wanted. So he decided to leave Penn to compete for Duke, which has its own golf course and outdoor facility right on campus.
"I loved Wharton; I miss it and I miss my friends there," he said. "But when you have all of that work to do and you have to set aside all of that time just to go to and from practice, it's tough."
And at Duke, Pipitone - who called the climate at Penn an important factor in his decision to transfer - reported that it is a big advantage to have more days of practice outdoors, especially as he toys with the idea of playing professionally.
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Penn's main indoor facilities include Haines Golf Room in Hutchinson Gym, which contains the golfing net and video and computer equipment to work on players' swings. There is a putting area and weight room nearby.
The team also makes use of the simulator in Pottruck Gym, where they hit into a screen depicting a golf course.
As a Texas native, Pipitone had his first true offseason last winter at Penn. So to maintain his swing, he spent a lot of time in the Haines room during the winter.
"I couldn't see [the flight of] a golf ball for like three months because of the weather," he said.
"I was just indoors hitting; I was just trying to maintain anything I had. It took about a month after spring break until I could actually shoot a [good] score.
"Maybe some guys up north know how to do it better than I did," he said.
Indeed, Penn's golf team is made up of students from all over the country, and this year's standout freshman, Kevin Huntington - from the Philadelphia suburbs - is more comfortable with the seasonal changes.
Huntington used to play hockey during the golf off-season and grew accustomed to the time off. In addition, he said, being from the climate "definitely helps."
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Despite the winter weather and the long commute to the practice course, Vaughn has been successful recruiting athletes to Penn. The trick, according to Vaughn, has been in "trying to find out what players want and need and showing them how we can provide it."
For prospective golfers determined to improve, Vaughn, a former All-American golfer at East Carolina, has had plenty of experience both playing and teaching.
Vaughn also makes a point of seeking out students that could benefit more from playing at Penn than at a more competitive school in a warmer climate.
"We're very fortunate that we have a lot of players that look at Penn as a place to play collegiate golf," he said.
"A kid might say, 'Penn might not be as competitive as a Duke or a Stanford, but I might be one of the top players at an Ivy League school,' and that's the profile of the student-athlete that we get."
Perhaps most importantly, alumni and friends of Penn golf have also set up an extensive alumni network - that Pipitone called "great and very involved" - to support the team and raise money for it.
In addition, Vaughn hopes to expand the team's indoor facilities with the development of the postal lands Penn recently acquired. Some schools in similar climates, such as Northwestern, have built state-of-the-art indoor facilities to enhance players' practice sessions during the off-season.
"Our main focus as far as funding is to become self-sufficient," Vaughn said. "We have an endowment now with over a million dollars raised over the years and that helps us with our yearly budget.
"In the end, we'd love to be in a situation like [the one at Northwestern] where we have everything that we could possibly need facilities-wise; it would make us as least as attractive as some of the northern programs."
Until then, though, the Quakers will continue to pile into coach Vaughn's van at 2 p.m. and head off to practice. And unlike Pipitone, Vaughn sees that as an advantage.
"In the time you get to spend with your teammates in the van you start to develop close-knit relationships," he said.
"Coming down the stretch of the tournament, it's that cohesiveness that builds titles in my book."
