Hitting before letting somebody play through.

Is this really bad form? We had a couple behind our foursome yesterday who started lecturing us on pace of play when we were teeing off. We had one guy who chunked his drive and went to hit again, this was not a tournament, it was a golf outing. So he played his first shot, but we all chunked a bunch of shots, and after the lady was so rude, we all made sure that we putted out every player, usually we will pick up when things get out of hand. We asked them if they wanted to play through on the next hole, but we hit while we were waiting for them to catch up, then waited for them. They just drove past us without even acknowledging us and drove on to the next hole. Their loss.  But should we have just waited there for them to catch up and hit before we hit? By approaching us already angry on the first tee, they kind of lost all of our sympathy, and we kind of rubbed their nose in some slow play one the first hole, but were we that wrong? If they were such fast players, I would think they would have caught up with us, as they made a big show of waiting for us to clear the green. We did wait a little while for them at the second tee before we hit, but finally we got impatient.

We went off on our tee time. I think the real problem was the course not spacing tee times having these guys right on top of us while we were still teeing off. Other than one guy going to hit a second shot, we had not made any unreasonable number of practice swings, like more than one or two, or committing any other obvious violations of decorum.

Are we supposed to just sit and wait at the next hole however long it takes the group behind us to catch up, to let them play through? There was nobody ahead of us for several holes. Nobody else caught us.

About four and a half hours. We played best ball on the back nine, which sped it up a lot. We had good holes and bad holes. The first one was a bad hole. The guy who went to re-tee picked up pretty often as he had a pretty bad day. We probably did get a little passive aggressive on the first hole, but just a tip, maybe had they not started out with the anger, they would have enjoyed their afternoon more. As for us, we had a great time. I was just curious about hitting while waiting for them to play through.

Not to beat a dead horse, but so long as your group was keeping pace with the group you were following........there is no need to let anyone play through.

Honestly, this would annoy me too.  If you suck and chunked a ball and someone is waiting on you.. sorry but get the hell off the tee box and play your ball.  The fact that is wasn't a tournament is irrelevant.

Exactly what I was thinking.

We are talking about the first tee here, going off on time, and they didn't even show up until we had already started to tee off. This was a total hair trigger thing. There was no line when we got there, and nobody caught up with us after we let them pass, though we did occasionally see the group behind us teeing off when we were on the green of a par four.

In retrospect, we should have let them play though even though we had already teed off, and after they did, let our guy hit his second shot. I just didn't know whether this was done or not. Not hitting the second shot I mean, this is a guy who took up the game last year at 59 and loves it more than it loves him, but letting someone play through after you have already hit.

The other thing is that this was a course in northern Vermont, in a little village, that is seldom crowded, if ever, not  a course on Long Island, for example, which is why there is no starter and they send you to the first tee as soon as you pay. We only had a tee time because we paid on GolfNow. Honestly, had they asked to go first, seeing there were four of us and two of them, we would have let them. But they weren't there when we started to tee off.

Lesson for me is let them play through even after we have hit. Lesson for you guys is to be polite and you will probably get what you want and enjoy your round more.

If someone started off right away lecturing about pace of play before the round even started it means they were more worried about getting done at a certain time than they were anything else. If that were the case they should have simply stated they were hoping to get done by a certain time and would it be ok if they played through. Starting off with an attitude is the worst way to get what you want. I imagine they may also have been regulars at that course. Also, the fact that you had enough time to wait, hit your shots, then wait some more before they even made it to you probably meant that you weren't going to be holding them up anyway.

Totally agree, a lot of times, if someone is playing through they are on a cart and I'm walking, so they will get to their ball quicker than I can get to mine, so make sense to hit, let them hit and then all move out at the same time.

I honestly wish I could take that advice and react in precisely that manner in such situations. I'd be a better person for it, and probably much happier overall.

But, Lord help me, I just can't. I would've poked them, and then poked them again at the very next opportunity.

It's a character flaw, for sure.

It was the first hole.  Two off of the first tee is a custom practiced so widely that I personally don't think it's reasonable for someone to get upset about that.

True. And honestly, I'd rather that they hit another one in the hope that it's much mo betta and speeds things along! ;-)

I'm confused as to how somebody could be complaining about pace of play before the round starts. Did they have an earlier tee time and you cut in front of them?  Or did they just assume you'd play slow because you started off with bad drives?

I don't get it.