Solving Slow Play: A New Pace of Play Program You can Support in 2013

[phan52]

Originally Posted by MyrtleBeachGolf

There are courses around here where there is a gap of over 1/2 mile between holes. Sometimes it's a 2 minute golf cart ride to go between the last green and the next tee. There is a ZERO percent chance that walking is faster than riding a cart. It's just not the case.

If there are players who are playing more slowly with a cart than they are as walking, they are clearly just goofing off. If you park your cart in the correct areas, ans enter and exit the fairway where indicated, taking a cart is much faster.

Those courses are most likely resort courses that have more land to build a golf course and are also looking for the revenue, typical in places like Myrtle. But the vast majority of golf courses are not built like that. And no matter what the layout, with accessable ingress and egress,  "cart path only" courses are always going to be slower in a cart.

[colin007]

i have only ever played on a private course once, and it seemed like one of the main reasons why the members were members in the first place was to play fast on a relatively empty course.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by phan52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fourputt

Your private club is not typical of golf across the US either.   It's a different mindset from a well run public course.  I've played a few private courses and never yet seen anyone out on the course encouraging a good pace of play.  They don't want to piss off members who pay a lot of money to play there.  Even upscale public and resort courses have employees whose sole job is to keep things flowing, no matter if they are walking or riding.

I'm not arguing that there aren't cart users out there who are idiots, but all else being equal, a foursome in carts who know how to properly use them will leave a foursome of walkers in their dust.  The difference in travel time alone is significant - 15 or so mph for a cart vs. 4 mph for a fast walker.

That is one of the more ridiculous statements I have read on this board. I play 95% of my golf on private courses and pace of play is am imperative at every single one of them. It is one of the main reasons people pay the dues in the first place. Most want play to be around 4 hours and anything over 4:15 is unacceptable. Golf committees rule these places, not the whims of the golf staff. They will penalize and restrict players who are multiple offenders.

And BTW, most walkers go right to their ball and are ready to hit when it is their turn. Players in carts have to deal with the whims of the driver. I go crazy when I am in a cart (usually just in outings that take 5-6 hours to play) and my ball is closer, but the driver goes right to his ball without a thought. If I am not driving, I grab a handful of clubs and walk to my ball. I''ll get there faster.

Your private club doesn't have to deal with the sheer number of players that a typical public course does.  They can afford to just pass out the info and let the members police themselves.  Except for brief periods on the weekends, I doubt that your course gets 1/4 of the traffic that my home course deals with 7 days a week.  The focus of Play 240 Golf is aimed at courses which actually have a need for it, and one main cause of a course getting bogged down is volume.  The more players they can get through the course at a reasonable pace, the more revenue they generate, and that takes more than just telling players to be nice and play fast.

[dsc123]

http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-equipment/blogs/newstuff/2013/01/play-240-golf-takes-on-issue-o.html Getting some good coverage

[phan52]

Your private club doesn't have to deal with the sheer number of players that a typical public course does.  They can afford to just pass out the info and let the members police themselves.  Except for brief periods on the weekends, I doubt that your course gets 1/4 of the traffic that my home course deals with 7 days a week.  The focus of Play 240 Golf is aimed at courses which actually have a need for it, and one main cause of a course getting bogged down is volume.  The more players they can get through the course at a reasonable pace, the more revenue they generate, and that takes more than just telling players to be nice and play fast.

You are clearly clueless about how the vast majority of private clubs operate. And BTW, I would invite you to show up at our first tee on any day of the week in-season after 2:00 PM, and weekends all day long, and tell me that we don't have traffic to rival a well operated public course. We have 350 playing members, at least 100 spouses who play, and I don't even know how many juniors. We don't "tell" them to play at a decent pace of play, we insist on it. Do we police ourselves? Darn straight!

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by phan52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fourputt

Your private club doesn't have to deal with the sheer number of players that a typical public course does.  They can afford to just pass out the info and let the members police themselves.  Except for brief periods on the weekends, I doubt that your course gets 1/4 of the traffic that my home course deals with 7 days a week.  The focus of Play 240 Golf is aimed at courses which actually have a need for it, and one main cause of a course getting bogged down is volume.  The more players they can get through the course at a reasonable pace, the more revenue they generate, and that takes more than just telling players to be nice and play fast.

You are clearly clueless about how the vast majority of private clubs operate. And BTW, I would invite you to show up at our first tee on any day of the week in-season after 2:00 PM, and weekends all day long, and tell me that we don't have traffic to rival a well operated public course. We have 350 playing members, at least 100 spouses who play, and I don't even know how many juniors. We don't "tell" them to play at a decent pace of play, we insist on it. Do we police ourselves? Darn straight!

My home course averages nearly 100,000 rounds a year with essentially a 9 month season.  That's the equivalent of 285 rounds  per year for 350 members.  We can "insist" all we want, but as a public facility we don't have the luxury of a captive audience, so some sort of ongoing education and enforcement is necessary, and that is what Play 240 is all about.  You said yourself that you joined a private club to get away from the hassles of public golf.  Don't come back now and try to tell us that there is some sort of equivalency.  It's apples and oranges.

[phan52]

My home course averages nearly 100,000 rounds a year with essentially a 9 month season.  That's the equivalent of 285 rounds  per year for 350 members.  We can "insist" all we want, but as a public facility we don't have the luxury of a captive audience, so some sort of ongoing education and enforcement is necessary, and that is what Play 240 is all about.  You said yourself that you joined a private club to get away from the hassles of public golf.  Don't come back now and try to tell us that there is some sort of equivalency.  It's apples and oranges.

You are completely changing what I am saying. Since when did I say that Play 240 didn't have merit? You are the one who said that players at public courses would just throw written notes in the trash. I assure you, players at private courses take it very seriously. And BTW, you are the one who said, and I quote, "I've played a few private courses and never yet seen anyone out on the course encouraging a good pace of play. They don't want to piss off members who pay a lot of money to play there." That is nonsensical. You apparently have some pre-conceived attitude about private clubs. The only reason private golf clubs exist in the first place is the "golf" and they take the game very seriously, primarily pace of play.

[ProfessorGAC]

Too long for a round to last.  The four hour round is an anachronism.  It's based upon four guys walking.  Most weekend players are in carts, the carts cruise at 12 to 15 mph.  Since most people, carrying clubs, walk a little over 3mph, and the typical course (including walking from green to tee) is about four and a half miles, it takes 80 or so minutes to WALK the course.  That number should be cut by a MINIMUM of 50%.  The goal should be to lower the time a round ought to take to 3.5 hours tops.

My two guys and me play really early.  I'll admit it's not the most crowded course, but we're usually first or second off.  It's typical for us to play 18 in two and a half hours.  Scores for the crowd will be typically between 2 and 12 over.  Two of us are 4 to 5 and the other guys is about a 10.  So, we're not hackers but we're not scaring the guys on TV with the quality of our game, either.

And, i'm willing to acknowledge that people not hitting the ball as straight cause one guy to drive to one side of the fairway and the other to the opposite side.  That of course takes time off the clock.  But, i'm talking an hour extra.

Four hours is too darned long for a round of golf to last.  Creating a goal of 4 hours means they're really not trying to speed up play, they're just trying to slow the rate of increase in the time it takes to play a round.  The goal needs to be far more ambitious.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by ProfessorGAC

Too long for a round to last.  The four hour round is an anachronism.  It's based upon four guys walking.  Most weekend players are in carts, the carts cruise at 12 to 15 mph.  Since most people, carrying clubs, walk a little over 3mph, and the typical course (including walking from green to tee) is about four and a half miles, it takes 80 or so minutes to WALK the course.  That number should be cut by a MINIMUM of 50%.  The goal should be to lower the time a round ought to take to 3.5 hours tops.

My two guys and me play really early.  I'll admit it's not the most crowded course, but we're usually first or second off.  It's typical for us to play 18 in two and a half hours.  Scores for the crowd will be typically between 2 and 12 over.  Two of us are 4 to 5 and the other guys is about a 10.  So, we're not hackers but we're not scaring the guys on TV with the quality of our game, either.

And, i'm willing to acknowledge that people not hitting the ball as straight cause one guy to drive to one side of the fairway and the other to the opposite side.  That of course takes time off the clock.  But, i'm talking an hour extra.

Four hours is too darned long for a round of golf to last.  Creating a goal of 4 hours means they're really not trying to speed up play, they're just trying to slow the rate of increase in the time it takes to play a round.  The goal needs to be far more ambitious.

You admitted the problem in your post.  Your course isn't the "most crowded", and that is a significant factor.  The more players you put on a course, the more chances there are for problems to occur, both legitimate playing trouble, and a lackadaisical attitude toward pace, and both are contributing factors.  Changing a paradigm is a huge task, and the paradigm on the typical public course in the US now is 4½ hours.  It has not only become a standard of sorts, but it's firmly entrenched in the golfer's mind that 4½ hours is a "proper" pace of play.   It's easy to figure out where you stand using that constant, because it's a 4 hole per hour pace.  4 hours brings a fraction into the formula - 4.5 holes per hour, and just what constitutes half of a hole?   I agree that 4 hours should be easily attainable, but it's going to take educating both course management and players.  It will involve some significant paradigm changes.

Think about it - one lost ball search per group per round on a busy course with no tee time spacing to allow for it will put a course at near 5 hours by noon.  No matter how good some groups may be at catching up after a delay, there is going to be a trickle down effect through the field that eventually becomes a serious problem.  And you are wrong if you think that 4 hours isn't a faster pace than the current standard.  Just ask those Southern Cal public linksters if 4 hours wouldn't be a fantasy dream come true.

Most public courses have a mix of cart and walking traffic, often within the same group, so you can't relate pace to either form.  Good pace of play is a mindset, and if you don't have it, you aren't going to do all of those little things that make the difference.  On my home course when the ball leaves the mowed rough, it's usually lost (or if found it's unplayable), yet too many players still spend 4 or 5 minutes before acceding to that inevitability.  They need to take a minute or two at most after they get to the area, then go play on with the provisional ball which they should have hit when the original ball vanished into 3 foot deep native grass.  If you can't afford to lose a ball, then you can't afford to play golf.  Take your medicine and play on.  I do this even in a tournament, because I accept that the chances of finding or playing a ball in that rough are no better than one in 100.

[RGoosen]

Originally Posted by ProfessorGAC

Too long for a round to last.  The four hour round is an anachronism.  It's based upon four guys walking.  Most weekend players are in carts, the carts cruise at 12 to 15 mph.  Since most people, carrying clubs, walk a little over 3mph, and the typical course (including walking from green to tee) is about four and a half miles, it takes 80 or so minutes to WALK the course.  That number should be cut by a MINIMUM of 50%.  The goal should be to lower the time a round ought to take to 3.5 hours tops.

My two guys and me play really early.  I'll admit it's not the most crowded course, but we're usually first or second off.  It's typical for us to play 18 in two and a half hours.  Scores for the crowd will be typically between 2 and 12 over.  Two of us are 4 to 5 and the other guys is about a 10.  So, we're not hackers but we're not scaring the guys on TV with the quality of our game, either.

And, i'm willing to acknowledge that people not hitting the ball as straight cause one guy to drive to one side of the fairway and the other to the opposite side.  That of course takes time off the clock.  But, i'm talking an hour extra.

Four hours is too darned long for a round of golf to last.  Creating a goal of 4 hours means they're really not trying to speed up play, they're just trying to slow the rate of increase in the time it takes to play a round.  The goal needs to be far more ambitious.

I totally don't understand how a round of golf takes 4 hours either.  Maybe our foursome takes 3 hrs 45 minutes if it is cart path only.  We usually play as a 3-someone and try to get one of the first tee times of the day.  We probably average 3 hrs 15-30 minutes.

I refuse to tee off after 8:30 am, because I know that the pace of play will be 4+ hours.  We actually have two courses that we frequently play at that will let you tee off 10 minutes before daylight.  It sucks on the tee shot and the approach shot, but the rest of the round is stress free. As it stands now, I have to plan my tee times 6-10 days in advance so I can insure that I tee off before the slow people tee off.  Golf Now and calling pro shops on speed dial until someone answers at the crack of dawn has been a weekly event for me for the past 5 years.

I wish this was a hard fast rule that tee times...

1) Before 10 am had to be played under 3 hrs 45minutes

2) After 10am you could play in 4 hrs 15-20 minutes or whatever the course deems appropriate

3) Tee off after 1pm and you can play as slow as you want...just let faster groups play through.

How much simpler could it get?

[Mordan]

Originally Posted by iacas

So the answer to my question is no. :)

I think people could get people to play just as quickly here as I don't think the format changes the time appreciably, especially when we're just talking about playing in four hours.

Undoubtedly I believe they play faster, but I don't attribute much of it to the format - rather to their general mindset of not being jerks to the hundred or so golfers behind them.

I'm a bit late to this but no one really chimed in with good info. I was a member at a club in the south of England for a couple of years before I moved back to Australia and as far as I could gather the way things operated was pretty typical of all clubs in the region.

We only played normal stroke (called medal) competition rounds about 12 times a year. The monthly medal competitions during summer and big "board" competitions where there was a trophy on the line and the winner would get their name up on one of the boards on the walls of the clubhouse.

Everything else (other than scrambles etc) was stableford scoring, at a guess 40 comps a year. Regardless of the method of scoring, individual competition rounds were always played in threesomes, never foursomes.

Stableford comps definitely ran smoother and faster. Rounds longer than 4 hours for stableford comps would cause mutterings in the clubhouse but 4.5 hours was more expected for medal, especially the club championship. Perhaps the fact that these were the most prestigious competitions contributed too, but being able to pick up and move onto the next hole without turning in a NR (no result) for the competition made a big difference.

In non-competition play it was pretty much all either match play or stableford scoring. Most groups at the club would draw foursomes and then pairs within each foursome and play best individual stableford across the group and then have a match play side bet within each group between pairs (better ball). Short putts would pretty much always be conceded in these games.

[Bullitt5339]

I found a source of some of the slow play at my club yesterday.  The club rules are that on weekends, you must have tee times up until 1:00 PM and you must use a cart, but starting at 1:00, only members of the club who want to walk can start then.  Non-Members cannot walk and must use a cart.

They have a daily money game that always reserves quite a few of the tee-times around noon.  This is nothing new, they've been doing it for as long as I can remember and it's a daily thing.  We know that typically the walkers are going to get held up eventually by the guys playing in the game.  Yesterday there were only 16 players in the game, so by 1:00 they were long gone and we walked the front 9 in 1hr 11min.  When we were coming up on #9, there was a twosome behind us, but we were on the green when they hit the tee box, so we figured that eventually they'd catch up to us and we'd let them play through, noone was within sight behind them.

We didn't go to the clubhouse, and went straight to the 10th tee, where there was a group from the game on #10, including one of my walking partner's father.  I looked at him and asked "They started at noon, what are they doing on #10?"...  Before he could answer, another group of 4 in carts (from the game) pulled up on the 10th tee box.  So now there's two groups on 10 waiting to tee off on this short Par 3.  One of the guys in my group knows all of them through his father, and they tell him that they only have 3 holes left to finish out the game, 10, 11 and 12.  They had skipped these holes because of traffic earlier.  Much to my dismay, he told them to go ahead and play through.

We had the same thing happen on #13.  "Hey man, we just have 13 and 14 to finish up"  and this time they skipped through 13 to get ahead of us and tee off on 14 and then came back and played 13.  I finally said something to my playing partner who knew them, asking why he would let them just play through when he knew they were jumping around.  He said if he didn't, then he would have to hear it from his dad for the rest of the day.  So there was a small altercation between me and the group from the game, since he wouldn't say something.

Today, the Pro and I are going to have a nice long talk again........  Just a couple weeks ago, because of other members complaining, there's a new sign that says "No Starting Your Round on #10 unless instructed to by the Pro Shop", which is a direct result of things this game was doing that were inconveniencing other golfers.  He's going to have to have another talk with them, because them playing holes in random order and just skipping around the course as they see fit.  I'm pretty livid about it still this morning.

After all that, I still finished the round in 3:40.......

[meenman]

Originally Posted by Bullitt5339

we walked the front 9 in 1hr 11min.

I think it is a bit unrealistic to think you will never wait when you play a front 9 that fast - unless your course is built for walking.

But I will agree with being annoyed at people that jump all over. We had the same issue yesterday - I played in the afternoon because I had friends in town and they are too slow to take out in the morning. The front was a slightly painful 2:15, but with people apparently randomly jumping on a;; over the back 9 - it ended up being a 5 hour round. By the 17th hole, I was garbage. The one drawback to a private course in a gated community is that people will pop out everywhere (even though they are supposed to check in, but rarely do since there is no one out there to enforce it)

[Bullitt5339]

Originally Posted by meenman

I think it is a bit unrealistic to think you will never wait when you play a front 9 that fast - unless your course is built for walking.

But I will agree with being annoyed at people that jump all over. We had the same issue yesterday - I played in the afternoon because I had friends in town and they are too slow to take out in the morning. The front was a slightly painful 2:15, but with people apparently randomly jumping on a;; over the back 9 - it ended up being a 5 hour round. By the 17th hole, I was garbage. The one drawback to a private course in a gated community is that people will pop out everywhere (even though they are supposed to check in, but rarely do since there is no one out there to enforce it)

I always expect to wait a bit.  I know the course gets crowded and will slow down.  While I like to play fast, I don't expect to be able to play at my pace.  I was annoyed that I wasn't slowed by congestion on the course yesterday, a slow or new golfer.  I was slowed by other members of the club that thought that they shouldn't ever have to wait, so they were jumping around the course, which made everyone else have to wait.

And the course is built for walking, but the guys skipping around were in carts.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by meenman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bullitt5339

we walked the front 9 in 1hr 11min.

I think it is a bit unrealistic to think you will never wait when you play a front 9 that fast - unless your course is built for walking.

But I will agree with being annoyed at people that jump all over. We had the same issue yesterday - I played in the afternoon because I had friends in town and they are too slow to take out in the morning. The front was a slightly painful 2:15, but with people apparently randomly jumping on a;; over the back 9 - it ended up being a 5 hour round. By the 17th hole, I was garbage. The one drawback to a private course in a gated community is that people will pop out everywhere (even though they are supposed to check in, but rarely do since there is no one out there to enforce it)

At my father-in-law's course we would often skip over a slow group, since there were several holes arranged in a way that made it easy to do.  If there were players on them when we came back to pick up the skipped holes, we deferred to those playing the course in the correct order.  That just seemed to me to be proper courtesy.

[dave s]

Taken from the 240 Golf rules section and probably mentioned already:

Play from the appropriate set of tees – Rule #9 Click to hide

Please consider the set of tees your group chooses to play. Visit PGA.com for information about TEE IT FORWARD. Teeing it forward will help you play on pace, and increase enjoyment.

My golf league plays on a course used by area HS golf teams.  When the HS kids beat the hell out of the blue tees (just under 6100 yards) the course moves a bunch of the tees to the blacks (tips) which lengthens the course to 6400+ yards.  Want to see some SLOW play?  Show up on a weekend and most of the hacks there are playing from the black tee boxes.

PGA's Tee It Forward is a great concept.  I use this when playing golf on vacation and choose a set of tee boxes 5900-6200 (max!) yards because this length fits my game, it's fair to my hdcp level and makes for an enjoyable round of golf.  When I play well, I'm low-80s.  If I left my swing at home, I can still limp through a round with low-90s.

I believe golfers playing the WRONG set of tees leads to slow play more than just about anything out there.

dave

[loki16]

I got hooked on golf just 3 years ago and until recently follow the lead of the more experienced fellows in my group. Now that I've got a better understanding of etiquette and have more confidence I do my bit to move things along. And if I see a group behind us catching up I'll suggest we step up the pace before it becomes a hands-on-hips issue.

I play lots of private and semi-private courses here in Barcelona (Spain) with a mix of locals, English, Scots, Americans, assorted Europeans and a Kiwi, so am lucky enough to enjoy a fabulous cross section of cultures.

We're of varying levels, from mid 20s to single-digit players, and one thing we have in common is that all are concerned that we don't do anything to spoil anyone elses day out, (although sometimes we all need a gentle reminder now and again).

Leaving aside the course design argument for the moment,  I see it as the responsibility of all players, especially the 'senior' player/s in the group, to self-regulate. Leaving it to committees is just passing the responsibility to the people that can set the rules but cannot enforce them, and who wants a marshall giving you grief if the alternative is to self-regulate?

It's up to us.

[dirkduffer]

Originally Posted by phan52

That is one of the more ridiculous statements I have read on this board. I play 95% of my golf on private courses and pace of play is am imperative at every single one of them. It is one of the main reasons people pay the dues in the first place. Most want play to be around 4 hours and anything over 4:15 is unacceptable. Golf committees rule these places, not the whims of the golf staff. They will penalize and restrict players who are multiple offenders.

And BTW, most walkers go right to their ball and are ready to hit when it is their turn. Players in carts have to deal with the whims of the driver. I go crazy when I am in a cart (usually just in outings that take 5-6 hours to play) and my ball is closer, but the driver goes right to his ball without a thought. If I am not driving, I grab a handful of clubs and walk to my ball. I''ll get there faster.

If that's one of the more ridiculous statements, then you must be new to this board.  I agree with the other poster.  Depending on the club, many clubs are EXACTLY as he described.  They don't want to piss off certain members.  Perhaps a member is also on the board.  Or perhaps they bring a lot of clients to the club or have $5,000 dining/drink bills each month.  I've seen an occasional marshal mention pace of play to a member and the member went off on the marshal talking about how he's embarrassing him in front of his wife.  A few hours later, the member was in the pro shop ripping the pro a new one.  Still fuming about how he pays his dues like everyone else and he's not going to be told how to play his game.  It DEFINITELY happens.  Hell, I was on the golf committee and we couldn't even get those members to agree on pace and protocol.