Slow Play

[mdl]

I do a lot of backpacking, and with the weight of a golf bag on your back I'd say a 3mph walking pace is reasonable. If you figure +/- 4 miles of walking on a course, yes that's only 1:20 of walking. But with a 4some, you've gotta make at least 16 shots per hole. Even with a reasonable 20 seconds per shot and everyone a scratch golfer, that's another 1:36. If you really want to golf in under 3 hours with a 4some, everyone's gotta be spending more time worrying about hustling than they do worrying about club selection, course management, pre-shot routine, and making actual shots, and even with an un-rushed 20 seconds per shot average, you're only coming in near 3 hours if everyone's near scratch.

Now I've played at my optimal pace before, and that's always been a little over 3 hours with a 4some. Maybe there are guys out there who'd rather take 10 seconds per shot average, but I've played lots of dawn rounds with no one in front where a member or two of the 4some was slowing us down, but I've never played in one where I was clearly slowing the group down. Of course, that's harder to gauge, but I've been slowed down by 30 minutes before, and that's super obvious, and I've never played with anyone who it was clear would rather be playing the course in 2:30 instead of 3:00 hours.

[WUTiger]

Do golf course pros & supers know how many rounds per year they are losing because of slow play? ... Golfers need to be educated about how to play efficiently,not yelled at or just told by a sign on the first tee or on the cart. ...

The pros and supers are between a rock and a hard place. Which way will drive away more golfers?

* If they try to educate people, and make them follow rules, and make them go elsewhere... OR... * Leave things the way they are Probably won't see much of this training and classes, with # of rounds falling off, and golf staffs having cutbacks and having to cover multiple jobs. It might work if a cadre of golfers were trained, and they urged their playing partners to speed it up, etc. Also, some see urging people to follow rules as elitist. I don't agree with such nonsense, but that's just the way it is. One thing that would help: On busy days, the staff could assign spotters in the landing areas of some of a course's more brutal holes, especially if landing areas can't be seen from tees. If people didn't have to hunt for 10 minutes for a ball that bounced a foot off the fairway, this would speed up play. When I used to caddie, someone always went ahead to watch where the drives landed. With demise of caddies, foursomes lost their eyes "out front." During the 1970s, golfers in carts would hire one spotter per foursome to tend the pins, etc, and watch the balls. But, this became rare as fewer caddies worked the courses. Eyes out front and someone to handle the pins did save time.

[CassinoNorth]

Dude... it ain't a race.

Why didn't you ask the 4th to throw his bag on with the single rider...?

[SwingIt]

That's stealing.

[CassinoNorth]

That's stealing.

There's alot worse things than not paying for a cart...

*shrugs*

[SwingIt]

Why didn't you ask the 4th to throw his bag on with the single rider...?

That's stealing.

[DaSportsGuy]

4 ball, 5 miles to walk in a round, carrying bags= 2 hours 5 minutes of pure walking.

Studies have actually shown that a foursome where everyone is walking is actually faster than a foursome that takes carts. Golf courses went to the golf cart because it gets the group off the first tee quicker so they can get more groups out and obviousley it's much easier and gives more people the opportunity to golf.

[colin007]

That's stealing.

big whoop...

[Fourputt]

Why didn't you ask the 4th to throw his bag on with the single rider...?

He chose to walk. He prefers to walk. I would too if I still could. My point wasn't that he was slow (he wasn't), only that 3 of us in 2 carts were faster than one guy walking.

That's stealing.

+1

There's alot worse things than not paying for a cart...

Yeah, and they are all wrong.

Wonderful approach to life. It's okay to be a thief as long as you could have done something worse... unreal.

[SwingIt]

There's alot worse things than not paying for a cart...

big whoop...

Would you shrug your shoulders or say big whoop to stealing a sleeve of Pro V1s from the pro shop? Because that's worth around $15 to the course also.

[andycook]

Unless everyone in the 4 some has their own cart. My observation is that carts are slower than walking if each cart has two people and has to chase after two balls in two different directions.

Studies have actually shown that a foursome where everyone is walking is actually faster than a foursome that takes carts. Golf courses went to the golf cart because it gets the group off the first tee quicker so they can get more groups out and obviousley it's much easier and gives more people the opportunity to golf.

[Shindig]

Unless everyone in the 4 some has their own cart. My observation is that carts are slower than walking if each cart has two people and has to chase after two balls in two different directions.

Carts are slower than walking

if the people in the carts don't know how to use them properly . Unfortunately, most cart groups caravan to one ball, watch a guy practice his shots and hit, caravan to the next ball, and so on. This is slower than walking (unless you caravan walking to a ball, etc).

[tasker]

Slow play results from these things:

1) Golfers who don't know how to be efficient (education)
2) Golfers who play from tees that reasonably exceed their ability (education)
3) Golfer play courses that are set up too hard for their ability
4) Courses tend to put out groups of golfers too close together given the relative ability

For me, I can play very fast if I am hitting fairways. If I am not, the pace slows down considerably or the penalty count goes through the roof if I bail too quickly. Ready golf is easy to do, but I see relatively very few people playing ready golf. If I am in trouble, I am usually in the woods looking for my ball immediately, not by the time I get to it and quite often "ahead of the play", so to speak - but this also pisses people off.

With respect to the attitude of the courses, I think if the tee sheet is full, they are happy. No offense to ranges, but I think I have only seen 2 or 3 rangers IN MY LIFE that actually manage to speed up play and/or help golfer to be more effective.

Not sure how to fix it but I do my part by sharing my tricks for efficient play with any newbies I encounter - and this effort is often appreciated in my opinion.

Golf does not need to be a race, it should be enjoyable and it is impossible to please everyone. But instead of complaining, people should make the effort to teach and educate newbies or those that are golf efficiency challenged - small price to pay for potentially good results and a sense of having achieved something to make the game more enjoyable for those around you.

And if you want to see fast, go to a private course during the day and watch the two guys (probably over 60 years of age) who are hitting fairways and greens all day. It is kinda magic to watch. And then they enjoy the "spare time" they have found to chat and relax.

[CassinoNorth]

Would you shrug your shoulders or say big whoop to stealing a sleeve of Pro V1s from the pro shop? Because that's worth around $15 to the course also.

That's not true...at all.

That cart is out on the course regardless if the 4th jumps on or not. I'm not saying knowingly choose to pay for 3 knowing the 4th is gonna jump on on the 2nd tee....I'm saying if youre constantly waiting on the 4th and the group behind you is on your back, let him at least throw is bag on and let him walk that way without his bag on his back.

[sacm3bill]

Do golf course pros & supers know how many rounds per year they are losing because of slow play? And if they do; are they doing anything about it...

I don't know about that... Assuming they're filling their tee sheets (and if they weren't, they'd be lowering prices until they were), the course makes the same amount of money whether a group plays in 3 hours or 6. They make even more money if they can squeeze the tee times closer together. So I don't think they're losing any revenue at all, and that's why nothing will ever be done about it.

Studies have actually shown that a foursome where everyone is walking is actually faster than a foursome that takes carts.

Do you have any links? I believe you, based on what I've seen over the years... just have never seen a study done on it, so am curious.

Golf courses went to the golf cart because it gets the group off the first tee quicker so they can get more groups out and obviousley it's much easier and gives more people the opportunity to golf.

Well, I think the main reason is the favorable profit margin on them.

[CyclistOK]

If I'm walking and my friends are in a cart, I'll usually just hold onto the side, with my bag on, and have them drop me off where our paths diverge. this only happens on tee shots though because it's usually the longest stretch on the cart path.

It's not like I'm using it extensively, just to speed up play, and it's already paid for.

The thing I find most annoying it when the group two groups in front of me is 4 very old, very bad golfers who are all walking very slowly, and are all strictly adhering to the rules. I know this seems bad, but if you duff the shot 3 times off the tee, then the 4th goes into the water 50 yds from the tee, just pick it up and drop with the others in your group, and if you're on your 12th stroke on a hole don't read the putt for 5 minutes then hit it only half the distance to the cup, or talk for 10 minutes trying to figure out who's farther from the hole resorting to using club lengths of your putter to determine who should go first... That is probably the most annoying thing about weekend golf.

[The Recreational Golfer]

Many courses print this admonition on their scorecards: "Your position on the course is immediately behind the group in front...not immediately in front of the group behind." That bugs me. If my group is routinely walking away from our second shots before the group behind gets to the tee, or leaving the green before the group behind is ready to hit on, I say our position is just fine.

[glk23]

My two cents worth comes from 50-60 rounds this season on 6+ differents muni's playing mostly as a single so I get paired with lots of 2 or 3 somes. Leaving out the suck factor (yes, 120 strokes takes longer than 80), IMO the number one factor in slow play is carts + people who do not know how to use them.

Many seem to think that if you have a cart that means pretty much zero walking. Can't tell you how many times I played with three other walkers only to catch a foursome in carts. I becomes quickly apparant why. For example, pair hits drives one down left side one down right side; they proceed to go to the left ball first, one guy gets out, goes through routine, hits ball, puts club away, then drive accross fairway to second guy who repeats process. Twice as bad when the other pair does the same thing or worse when they go to each ball one at a time. It only gets worse when one of them goes deep left/right and everyone looks before hitting the 2-3 balls in the fairway. It would be easy to go on and on about people in carts.

Second biggest I see is people not playing/knowing the concept of ready golf. If you are not on tv or playing for serious money, no need playing honors on every shot. Whoever is ready should hit the shot. Luckily most people I have been paired with understand this, but I have had a few say something. Usually it comes from a twosome when one slices off into nowhere and the other is in the fairway and I have the audacity to walk to my ball and hit it before they find the first one and/or get to the second one.

I believe both of these issues fall into lack of knowledge on the part of the weekend/occassional golfer. I think most courses could do a lot more to educate golfers, without pissing people off, if they really wanted to.