Jackie Seawell admits it. He's got this thing about owning driving ranges.

In his years as the head pro at Aiken's Woodside Plantation and Graniteville's Sage Valley Golf Club and now as the director of the Jones Creek Teaching Center, Seawell always seems to have a driving range on the side.

"I'd work all day long and then in the evening go to the driving range," said Seawell, whose first love in golf is teaching.

"It's funny, but since I got in the golf business in 1966, I got in it with a driving range and I've had a driving range off and on all my life, even though I've been a head professional," said Seawell, who has owned four ranges.

He still owns Seawell's Golf Center, a range he opened in the late 1990s in Anderson, S.C.

Seawell, who still lives in Aiken, doesn't have the chance to get to Anderson very much these days. That's all right; Jones Creek satisfies his driving range fix. When he walks out of his office, Seawell is on the club's driving range.

"This is ideal for me," he said.

What is it that draws Seawell to driving ranges?

"That's a question my wife (Claire) wants to know," he joked. "We could be driving somewhere and I'll say, 'That would be a nice place for a driving range.'"

Seriously, Seawell is a "range rat" because that is the place where he can help golfers improve.

"I enjoy walking the line and watching people hit balls," he said. "I enjoy helping people. I do enjoy the teaching part of it. I enjoy the junior part; I think that's what I'm going to do more of over here at Jones Creek."

Indeed, when they were juniors, Seawell worked with current PGA Tour player Matt Hendrix and mini-tour pros Kevin Kisner, Dane Burkhart and Seawell's son, David, a former PGA Tour member.

All those players lived in Aiken when Seawell worked with them. At his driving range in Anderson, he worked with Hooters Tour star Emmett Turner, who lived in nearby Greenwood, S.C., in the 1990s.

"Emmett and I started when he was 11 or 12," Seawell said of Turner, a former Augusta State All-American who's now 23. "Emmett was my little junior."

Seawell was the director of golf at Woodside Plantation from 1988-98. When he left, he planned to retire as a golf club pro and concentrate on his driving range in Anderson. Less than a year later, his good friend Weldon Wyatt called, and his plans changed.

"Mr. Wyatt wanted to build Sage Valley and wanted me to come down and help him," Seawell said.

Sage Valley opened in 2001 and Seawell was the director of golf until early this year, when his son, Daniel, took his place after being the head pro under his dad for three months.

That move opened the door for Jackie Seawell to get back to teaching at Jones Creek, which is co-owned by Wyatt.

"I'm approaching that age where I want to kind of take it easy," said Seawell, 65. "Mr. Wyatt worked with me on it."

Seawell talked Wyatt into letting him go to Jones Creek as the director of the teaching center. In addition to that, Seawell is an adviser at Jones Creek, Sage Valley and Aiken's Houndslake Country Club, another course co-owned by Wyatt.

"It was probably more my idea than his (Wyatt's) but he agreed with it," Seawell said. "I go by there (Sage Valley and Houndslake) once or twice and week. I enjoy coming over here (Jones Creek), to be honest with you."

Seawell and Cara Andreoli give clinics and lessons at the Jones Creek Teaching Center, with Andreoli serving as the lead instructor.

"I'm not going to be teaching like Cara," said Seawell, who said he'd like to do "a couple lessons" a day. "I don't want to teach all day in the hot sun, but I'd like to help some juniors and some young kids around here that are playing on the Tarheel Tour. If they want that opportunity, I'm going to give them a chance. A lot of those guys can't afford a golf lesson."

Seawell hired Andreoli at Woodside in 1993, and she stayed on in her role as a full-time teacher when Seawell left there five years later. It wasn't until this past February that Andreoli left Woodside.

Soon, she was up for a job at Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro, Ga., and called Seawell to see what he thought about it.

He told her to forget about that job and join him at Jones Creek, and she did.

"The setup at Jones Creek is fabulous and I always did want to work again with Jackie Seawell; he's a super person," Andreoli said. "I've always respected Jackie's opinion on everything."

The Jones Creek Teaching Center is separate from the International Golf Academy at Jones Creek, though they are in the same building. Seawell has made sure the lessons he and Andreoli give at the teaching center aren't too expensive.

"We've always thought that in Augusta, as the golf capital, there is plenty of room for some teaching pros to give lessons for a nominal fee," Seawell said. "We wanted to make it so if people in Augusta want to take a golf lesson, they can get a quality lesson, and they can afford it."