On recent golf trip, I had the unfortunate experience of seeing some interesting on-course behavior that was not exactly conducive to the pace of play, especially if you are walking. Then again, we can all learn from these scenarios.
- The pin is at the back of the green, the next hole is behind the green, and there’s a rope in front of green to block carts. Well, this group decides to park their pushcarts in front of the rope. They walk up to the green and do their putting. After putting, they walk back to their carts and around the green to the next hole. A more appropriate approach would have been to park their carts on the back side of the green so they would not have to walk back. The extra walk quickly added a few minutes to this hole. Not a big deal, but it can add up to 40 minutes over 18 holes of golf. Yes, the first 9 for this group took about 2:30.
- On a par-three water hole. The players ball appears to have gone into the water on the side of the green. The player walks up the green, parks the cart, and walks over to the check on the ball, without any clubs. He observes that the ball is in the water, walks back to the cart and grabs his ball retriever. (not his club). The ball is fished out. He walks back to the cart, returns the retriever, grabs the appropriate clubs, and walks back to his ball. Yes, he made three round trips to his bag before playing one shot. Instead, the player should have grabbed all the potential tools at the onset of checking his ball. It would have saved two round trips and been a lot less stressful.
- Most players have hit a shot out of bounds and more often than not, a new ball is dropped, and we keep playing where it entered. We play it as a lateral hazard. In this case, the player was in a tournament and hit out of bounds. It was a close call but insisted that it was in play. In other words, a provisional ball was not played. As you may have guessed, the ball was not spotted, and the player had to walk back and replay the tee-shot. 5-minute search, plus 5-6 minutes to retee. Yep, the folks behind this group, were not too happy. If you are playing by the rules, always hit a provisional when you think there’s a chance that the ball may have gone out of bounds (or not easily found in the vegetation.) You’ll save a ton of time and make your playing partners happier.
These observations apply to both walkers and riders. These are not huge issues if they happen occasionally, but all small things add up. If you can shed just a minute per hole, you would save about 20 minutes. Something to think about.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23409151@N06/2320949580