Last week, American Falls golf coach Robert Crompton had his kids lined up on American Falls’ ‘driving range,’ and he uses the term extremely loosely. The Beavers’ driving range is really just football practice fields and a soccer field. It probably stretches 250 yards before there’s going to be property damage or lost balls — and speaking of balls, there’s no machine scooping them up but, instead, his golfers trek down the grass and collect their shots like it’s an Easter egg hunt.
Senior Logan Mills can’t hit his driver on the ‘range’ for obvious reasons. It’s a hindrance for such a special talent, like forcing Picasso to create with only Crayons.
Crompton is always trying to devise things to test his best golfer, little games that keep him progressing. So one day last week he told Mills to aim at a small stack of metal bleachers that sat about 170-yards away. Crompton stood behind his senior, his awe and buzz heightening with each swing.
“(He) hit it with three-straight balls. I’ve never seen accuracy like that from me so to see him do it was pretty cool,” Crompton said. “There’s a definite difference between him and most. He’s a two-time district champ, winning it his freshman and sophomore year. We had plans of doing it again last year but that got shut down.”
Crompton works at the local American Falls golf course, which means he sees Mills five to six times a week putting or playing a couple of holes. Sometimes the course workers get a little frustrated with Mills because while they’re trying to go home, the Beavers’ senior may still be on the course whacking away at shots long after sundown.
It’s that work ethic that brought about college interest and a handful of offers. On Tuesday, Mills signed with Southwestern Oregon Community College for what he hopes is a two-year launching pad into a Division I career.
“It was definitely relief, like a weight lifted off your shoulders,” Mills said. “I visited (Southwestern Oregon) about a week ago and it was so cool … I decided on them because JUCO facilities aren’t super nice everywhere. It’s super tough to find. But these guys have beautiful housing, modern classrooms. It’s super nice there.”
The golf facilities, though, aren’t just nice on a junior college scale. They’re exquisite enough that people fly in from all over the world and gladly shell out a few Benjamins to tee off on the courses just outside of Coos Bay, Ore.
The home course for Southwestern Oregon CC is the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which has five courses amongst Golf.com’s top 100 courses in America. It’s hosted PGA Tour Events, U.S. Amateur Championships and could probably host a major at some point.
And Mills will get to practice and play there all the time.
“It’s so surreal. When you’re driving there, you’re going through everything and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, am I at the Masters right now,’” Mills said. “Then we pull up to the driving range and it’s insane.”
It was a real driving range, too, not just a large patch of grass given a new title. Come next fall Mills will have everything to elevate his game, which is a clear dichotomy from his current setup in Southwestern Idaho.
The American Falls golf course has great reviews, but it may as well be a mini-golf course for Mills. It doesn’t have a driving range and only includes nine holes. Most of Mills work comes on the putting green, where he tries to develop muscle memories on long putts and become automatic on everything within three feet.
But to practice with anything other than a putter or wedge, Mills has to do it on the course. He’ll go out for nine holes and try to test himself. The senior will drop a couple of balls, play from the back tees then maybe the front tees. He’ll play a scramble with just himself, playing shots off his best ball or worst based on what he wants to dial in on. If he needs a real practice range, however, he has to make the 30-minute commute to a course in Pocatello.
None of it is ideal, which makes all his accomplishments more incredible. He’s a two-time district champion and would probably be a three-time winner without COVID. And the lost year means he has only this season to fulfill his goal of being a state winner.
“He was already hungry but I think it’s at another level this year because last year got taken away,” Crompton said. “He knows it’s his last go-round and he has a lot to prove. The good thing for him is he’s trying to prove it to himself.”