There’s not a whole lot of grass in Manhattan, so the men’s golf team at Columbia University has to be resourceful in finding practice space.

The golfers hone swings in a converted squash court for much of the year and occasionally take a van across Harlem to the driving range on Randalls Island.

If players, for some reason, want to work out on an actual course, starting in March a van leaves campus each weekday at 2:40 p.m. for St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson (that means no afternoon classes for golfers). Otherwise, to practice the short game, the team heads up to the northern tip of Manhattan to pitch and chip on Baker Field, used by the football team.

“The yard lines help the guys judge the yardage on their shots,” the coach, Rich Mueller, offered gamely.

Despite these handicaps, Columbia just won its third consecutive Ivy League championship and a bid to the N.C.A.A. championships; the team starts regional play May 20 at Yale. That is, on Yale University Golf Course, which since 1924 has given Yale’s golf teams beautiful and challenging practice space a short shuttle bus ride from where the players live and study.

“Four of the eight Ivies have golf courses on campus, which can obviously make practicing more convenient,” Coach Mueller said. “We find a way to piece the whole thing together, and we wind up beating teams that have better access to resources than we do.”

Trips to the St. Andrew’s course were curtailed last week because of finals, so the team was back in the former squash court. On Monday, the players traded horror stories about exams and took turns with their putters on a less-than-smooth strip of synthetic green turf. They smacked balls into a heavy screen that displayed the projected image of a golf hole; a computer calculated the yardage, direction and trajectory of their shots.

This is the team’s clubhouse, where the golfers alternate hitting balls and books. There are redecoration plans afoot: some couches and tall wooden lockers, for that country club lounge-y feel.

“It’s much quieter here than the library,” Clark Granum, 20, a junior engineering major and the team’s star, said as others swung — Womp! Womp! — toward the screen.

Sweat | Who Needs Grass? – New York Times (blog)