If you subscribe to any of the popular golf magazines or
watch The Golf Channel, you have probably noticed an upswing in the amount of
time spent talking about “slow play”. Slow
play isn’t new to golf but it seems like it has only been in the last few years
where some professionals and experts
have started calling it “an epidemic” and that it is “ruining the game of
golf.”
While an exceedingly slow pace of play can drive anyone
crazy, I am not so certain that I would go as far to say that the game of golf
is being ruined by slow play. I play between 40 to 50 rounds a year at
courses all over the GTA and central Ontario, and this year, I have even had
the privilege of playing some great courses in the States and the on the east
coast. Although I have had my fair share
of slower than usual rounds, only once would I say that a round this year was ruined by slow play (picture an
overbooked course in the west end of Toronto on Father’s Day where they’re offering free golf for kids).
The issue really isn’t about a round being played slowly
that makes most people angry. If I’m in
a twosome, I can accept that I won’t be going anywhere quickly if there’s a long
line of foursomes in front of me. For
me, this so called epidemic is really
about a lack of etiquette or an understanding of the unwritten rules of
golf. Because of this lack of
understanding, the game is occasionally, and needlessly, reduced to a snail’s
pace. I enjoy golf because of the
etiquette that has evolved in the game but I sometimes take it for granted that
I learned this etiquette at a very young age and that newer players may not
fully understand the finer points of the unwritten rules of golf. To make things even more confusing, some of
these etiquette rules should be
broken in order to make the round more enjoyable. For example, many of us have been taught to
play honour golf, where the person
with the lowest score on the last hole shoots first. We’ve also been taught that the person
furthest from the hole is away, and that we should wait for them to shoot
before we take our turn. For the most
part, honour golf is the most
enjoyable way to make your way around the course BUT when it’s busy, everyone
should be playing ready golf.
While most golfers understand what ready golf is,
surprisingly few people play ready golf.
If a group is behind you, and if a golfer is ready to hit and is standing
on the tee-deck with a club in their hand, and the person who is technically
supposed to hit is cleaning a club or a ball, or is trying to make a club selection,
then by all means, whoever is ready should step up and hit. I have seen a lot of golfers not want to
break protocol though, and in doing so, hold up the pace of play. If that’s the case, then a simple, “I’m
ready” is enough to let your group know that you understand you’re not
technically supposed to be away, but for the sake of the sanity of everyone
around you, you’re teeing it up.
Ready golf should also be played on the fairways and around
the greens. If a foursome is scattered
all over the fairway, the person who has reached their ball first should hit as
long as it is safe to do so. Too many
times I have seen a person stand beside their ball on one side of the fairway,
waiting for a playing partner to reach their ball when the honour to hit is
really only a matter a few yards. The
same goes for around the greens. A
person who is standing at their ball and waiting to chip while the person with
the honour is parking the cart or is taking a long route around the green to
their ball, should usually chip away (unless a ball needs to be marked, etc.).
I am not suggesting that golfers need to speed their way
around a course and I am certainly not trying to eliminate the etiquette of the
honour system, but there is a big difference between an enjoyable pace and a
glacial crawl around the links. If every
group on the course played ready golf just once every hole, and it saved about
a minute of playing time per hole, the average foursome might play at a pace
15-20 minutes faster than if they played honour golf.
Ready golf is only one way of improving the pace of
play. Over the coming weeks, I’ll post a
few more entries about how golfers can improve their enjoyment of the round without
having to run around the course. In the
meantime, Bushwood would love to hear from you.
Leave a comment. Let other
golfers know what you do to ensure that you play within the recommended time.
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