Golf has a numbers problem

I played The Oaks in Pass Christian last Friday afternoon. They ran out of carts for the afternoon so you had to wait as people finished to get a cart. But once we started, we didn't have much of a wait on many holes. We were only playing 9 so I wasn't too worried about waiting. I think I'll be sticking to more 9 hole rounds.

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Obviously this would never happen but I'd love to live in a world where the starter/marshall observes each group going out and if you can't complete the first hole in a reasonable amount of time you're pulled off the course.

Can't count how many times I've been waiting on the first tee box while a group of people who look like they've never swung a club take 20 minutes to get near the green on a short par 4.

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This is definitely a problem, but the larger problem is courses trying to make money and the demand being as high as it has ever been. So, tee time intervals are way too small. You could have all single digit handicaps out there, and the pace will still get slowed down on a weekend.

I know it's about to be hot as hell outside, but walking really helps the flow of a round. Instead of waiting 5 minutes for every shot, you may wait a minute or 2 because it took some time to walk to the ball. Dream Golf has the luxury of doing this by charging $300+ for rounds, but they have a built in buffer for backups by only having 5 rounds an hour instead of 6.

I think the pace of play can be helped by the following:

1. Normalize walking
2. Hold people to tee times. No earlier and no later. Pace of play is more important than actual speed
3. Courses need to do a better job of trying to get 4 people in a group as often as possible. I rather just play with people I know, but I am only looking out for myself. Courses need to organize this better
4. Marshalls need to do their job

There is a clear problem today and it is a foursome that is playing slow and not letting anyone through. There is a twosome ahead of me, I am a twosome, and there’s a threesome behind me and we are all waiting at least five minutes on every shot.

And really while they are playing slow, if they just let people through it wouldn’t really be a problem. Starters need to talk about etiquette with some people and Marshall’s need to do a better job of telling them to either play faster or let people through. If a Marshall came and paired me up with a twosome ahead of us and had us and the three behind me play through the slow foursome, I think everything will be back on track.

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There is a twosome ahead of me, I am a twosome, and there’s a threesome behind me and we are all waiting at least five minutes on every shot.

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I agree to an extent. However, in this scenario, that foursome is going to wait for a twosome to play through, then will soon be caught by the other twosome. Then, since they've been waiting, that threesome will likely be on their arse. Even if they are a foursome that is playing at a good pace, now they've drastically slowed down their own round because there are not full groups behind them.

I understand there are assholes that just won't let people play through, but I am arguing that pairing the twosomes together will fix the pace of play. If that group does catch the foursome, then let them play through.

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I agree to an extent. However, in this scenario, that foursome is going to wait for a twosome to play through, then will soon be caught by the other twosome. Then, since they've been waiting, that threesome will likely be on their arse. Even if they are a foursome that is playing at a good pace, now they've drastically slowed down their own round because there are not full groups behind them.

I understand there are assholes that just won't let people play through, but I am arguing that pairing the twosomes together will fix the pace of play. If that group does catch the foursome, then let them play through.

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playing through has it's own problems as you mention here. Executed perfectly, it can help, but executed less than perfectly and you can slow the course down even further ime.

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I’ve never seen public courses as crowded as they are right now.

It’s madness.

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There's a huge uptick in young dudes with their dad or grandpas clubs going out on the course with no clue how to play golf.

I just don't really understand how it's fun to slog through 18 holes in 90+ degree heat shooting 130+ and losing 20+ balls in the process.


This thread is giving me PTSD from last weekend when I played timberlane and the group ahead of me had two guys out of the 4 that to have swung the club at least 150 times before getting to the 16th tee box.

You don't have to be any good to enjoy a round of golf, but taking 7 or 8 shots to make it to the green while losing 2 balls per hole sounds like 0 fun to me.

Links on the Bayou, in Alexandria, does not allow 2 player or 5 player groups, before 12, on the weekends.

The amount of people who don't know how to play ready golf is extremely frustrating. It doesn't matter who's technically the farthest out from the green, if you're at your ball just hit it. If you can't even break 100 you shouldn't be worried about whose turn it is.

Its especially bad with carts. Bad cart etiquette is probably 90% of the problem with slow and backed up courses. These courses really need to do a better job at educating people how to play cart golf. Just because you have a cart it doesn't mean you don't have to take more than 10 steps the entire day.

I've seen too many groups where both carts drive to the first ball, the guy plays it, and then both carts drive to the next ball, and they play like that all round. Each cart needs to drop off their first guy at their ball, then the 2nd guy drives to his, the first guy hits and should start walking towards the cart and then the cart drives to pick him up after the 2nd guy hits. Its really not that hard. If cart golfers knew how to manage their pace of play more efficiently we wouldn't have this problem.