Had a brief moment where I thought about quitting golf...

hemiths

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The pace of play is getting sickening. I just suffered though a 5.5 hour round of golf at a public course that charged $110. I don't understand why courses aren't holding people accountable for pace of play. The group in front of us was so angry, they left at the turn.

Second problem - starters letting the first tee pile up, and/or letting groups off back-to-back. We were 3 groups deep on the first tee, and the starter was letting groups tee off literally right after the group in front hit their second shot.

It's getting miserable. I know this has been discussed a billion and one times, but I needed to vent. I'm sorry and thank you. Carry on with your day.
 
Oh, and people playing blues and blacks, but can't clear their tee shot past the ladies tee, or hit a banana into the stratosphere.
 
Vent away man. The Sunday before I played at a sh!t hole about 10 minutes from where I live since it was after 3pm on Sunday I didn't feel like going anywhere further. $25 with a cart, no problem until I got to the first tee...With no starter...

A father-Daughter are on the tee and I'm like cool. Then a single. Then a two-some of older gentleman. It literally made ZERO sense.

So after putting for like 15 minutes next to Hole 1 I stepped up solo only to realize I'm going to catch these people ahead of me within one hole. As I finished Hole 1, the twosome ahead of me hadn't even teed off and at Hole 1 a threesome teed off.

When they got to where I was at I offered to join them since we are going to be backed up all day and they were cool with it. These 3 were just college kids smoking weed and hacking around every shot, I didn't care, but we were still waiting for everyone ahead of us, it was so bad.

No starter, no ranger, no warning, no structure, no anything. And it wasn't like we could jump to a different hole or whatever, the whole place was slammed.

But I digress.
 
I leave crowded courses, and weekend golf, to those who don't mind playing at a glacial pace. The best time to head out, around here, is weekday mornings when the temperature is 50 or below. Unfortunately; that is a rare occurrence.
 
I have found that the public courses around here are less crowded than they were 15 years ago and pace of play is no worse. Mostly tolerable I guess you would say. That being said, if I couldn't afford to play a private club where a round any longer than 4:15 is super rare, I would play more like 30 rounds a year instead of the 100+ that I do.
 
I think we've all been there. Ive had days where the course was so backed up that I walked off the course. Ive tried starting to play more twillight golf, hoping that would help but sometimes even thats not enough.
 
Situations like that definitely make golf tough to continue with. Around here we don't play many afternoon rounds for reasons like that. We're usually one of the first groups out. I know that's not always possible for everyone either. There have been many times I've turned down playing because I didn't want to spend that much time waiting around to play.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here and probably get hammered for it....but why be in such a hurry to get done with what you consider to be your passion? (at least golf is my passion) I get that 5.5 hour rounds and extremes like that are different but dang man, you could be working....believe me, I'd MUCH rather spend 5 hours on a golf course than work! It's always something that's driven me nuts a bit....stop being in such a hurry and enjoy the game! There....I'll now step off my soap box and get ready to get blasted. :beat-up:
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here and probably get hammered for it....but why be in such a hurry to get done with what you consider to be your passion? (at least golf is my passion) I get that 5.5 hour rounds and extremes like that are different but dang man, you could be working....believe me, I'd MUCH rather spend 5 hours on a golf course than work! It's always something that's driven me nuts a bit....stop being in such a hurry and enjoy the game! There....I'll now step off my soap box and get ready to get blasted. :beat-up:

You’re not wrong Jake. I try to go out and enjoy my rounds and accept that it might take a couple hours to get finished with 9.

I usually play early on the weekends, and head home after 9 to spend time with the family. if I’m pushing 2.5 hours for 9 holes it gets frustrating. I’ve got plans and things to do after I finish playing. When I’m out for a day of golf with my golf buddies it’s different, I know I’ve got a clear day to go play. I don’t get those very often though.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here and probably get hammered for it....but why be in such a hurry to get done with what you consider to be your passion? (at least golf is my passion) I get that 5.5 hour rounds and extremes like that are different but dang man, you could be working....believe me, I'd MUCH rather spend 5 hours on a golf course than work! It's always something that's driven me nuts a bit....stop being in such a hurry and enjoy the game! There....I'll now step off my soap box and get ready to get blasted. :beat-up:

I like to split the middle on this. I'm with you a bit because yeah I could be doing some real crappy stuff instead of golfing. But lets put into context what slow play does. It is like car traffic or air traffic. Three weeks ago in my Sunday league, we have set tee times as the first groups off. So this particualr day the starter decided to let a foursome go out first that had radomly showed up. We were the fourth and last of the groups heading out. First hole is a par 4, second in a par 3, All four groups were on the 2nd hole. That single foursome, made what is usually a 4 hour round, a 5.5 hour round. I thought the league president was going to have a stroke, the ranger stepped in a bit, but 2 holes in the damage was done. There is no recovering that time lost waiting on people.

But again, I could have (or maybe should have?) been cleaning my garage or pulling weeds instead of golfing.
 
Oh, and people playing blues and blacks, but can't clear their tee shot past the ladies tee, or hit a banana into the stratosphere.

I’m with you on that one. Recently I was playing with and behind guys who were playing from the blue tees and couldn’t Find the fairway with radar. None of them had any business teeing from there. I was perfectly fine teeing from the white tees. And watching them made me feel a lot better about my own game!
 
I leave crowded courses, and weekend golf, to those who don't mind playing at a glacial pace. The best time to head out, around here, is weekday mornings when the temperature is 50 or below. Unfortunately; that is a rare occurrence.

That doesn’t work for us working stiffs that can only play on the weekend. At least during daylight savings time I can get out after 4 pm and play as many holes as possible before it gets too dark.
 
I think everyone has a breaking point, its a matter of finding balance and getting the most out of your game.
 
I too am in the middle here, i don't mind the pace as long as it's reasonable understanding that there's always someone out there having a miserable day and couldn't hit the ocean if they were teeing off from the beach making it slower for everyone behind them. About 4 years ago just as my back was starting to give me troubles I played in a couple of USGA qualifiers and those rounds were miserable from a pace standpoint, 36 holes in summer heat in Houston with younger guys using range finders from greenside bunkers led to an almost 6 hour morning round and 20 minute break before the afternoon 18. That was a long day of golf that honestly felt like it would never end.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here and probably get hammered for it....but why be in such a hurry to get done with what you consider to be your passion? (at least golf is my passion) I get that 5.5 hour rounds and extremes like that are different but dang man, you could be working....believe me, I'd MUCH rather spend 5 hours on a golf course than work! It's always something that's driven me nuts a bit....stop being in such a hurry and enjoy the game! There....I'll now step off my soap box and get ready to get blasted. :beat-up:

It’s because slow play is in everyone’s heads these days so the minute things slow down, we start driving ourself nuts analyzing all the ways every dumba** in front of us is contributing to it.
 
Sounds like a moment of clarity as to frustration ... but not the solution.

I'd make tee times to roll out first in the morning when possible.

If you can't roll out early on a weekend, don't tee it up unless weather is keeping others away. My ideal when working would be one weekday and one weekend early in the a.m.
 
Players are one part of the problem but a large part of the problem is also the actual course design and the course administration. If you put up tee times with 7min intervalls on a weekend well then it's pretty much guaranteed that things will not flow smoothly. It's like when driving in traffic and there's even a minor thing on the side of the road that people slow down for it can really ripple down very far back. So basically the game is lost before you've even teed up, pair that with lack of marshals etc. and the result is endless rounds. Course design can also be unfavourable and creates congestions on the course (e.g. easy par4 followed by tough par3).

Maybe for crowded courses there needs to be weekend rules and pace put in place. If the baseline is that a par3 = 10min, par4 = 13min, par5 = 16min then a normal course would = 234min = 3h 54min. Add a 10% contingency and it's basically 4h30min that would be a realistic time to shoot for.

Question is how to get there but with modern technology one would imagine it's possible to have a GPS system that shows your allotted time for each hole that also everyone else sees, then your time is up then pick up everyone's balls and head to the next tee. If there's a transparent system everyone sees it also lowers the threshold for other players to enforce other groups. I would also put in place a mandatory 5-10min break between the front and back 9 as everyone typically in any case goes to the restroom, restaurant, etc. and if you have one group that does it but the group after doesn't well then you again easily create a congestion. Plus a mandatory break probably would bring added revenue to the bar which will pay for the lengthening of your tee time intervals to 10min.

Other ideas might be, all OB plays as red stakes, 220 (or even less) yards out and you're not allowed to go for the green in 2, heck put two holes and flags on each green and you are free to choose which you play (should reduce your overall green time for the whole group).

It will never be perfect but I just think there's not enough experimenting going on to make any strides in this area.
 
One of the things I find interesting about THP is reading about the golf experiences others have and how they contrast with my own experiences.
In the last year, my working stiff brother and I played about 120 rounds at 15 different courses. In that period I have never seen a single starter or marshal and have only experienced intolerable slow play once or twice. It's not as though the local courses don’t have marshals and slow play problems, they do but my playing buddy and I have adopted a routine where we avoid it. We play the better more popular courses during the off season or on evenings that don’t have leagues. When the weather is nice or when we play earlier in the day we’ll drive further out of town to less popular courses. During the peak season, we’ll abandon all but a couple of full-size courses and play most of our rounds at an executive course where the problems with crowds and slow play seem to scale down with the course. We didn’t really make a conscious effort to do this, it came about because of our aversion to people and the fact that our age and prostrate problems have us ducking behind a tree every couple of holes, something that is very awkward on a crowded course.
If we had to play 5 hour rounds and deal with crowds I think we would also consider quitting the game.
 
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Just wanna say, just because someone can't hit a fairway to save their life and can't score well enough to satisfy does not mean they have to play slow. I played what is likely the worst round I've played in the past 6 months today. I hit 1/13 fairways and shot a lackluster 102, but I did it in under 3.5 hours. The course was empty and I felt like I played slow, but I can deal with that time.
 
Just wanna say, just because someone can't hit a fairway to save their life and can't score well enough to satisfy does not mean they have to play slow. I played what is likely the worst round I've played in the past 6 months today. I hit 1/13 fairways and shot a lackluster 102, but I did it in under 3.5 hours. The course was empty and I felt like I played slow, but I can deal with that time.

Agree completely. Plenty of good golfers are plenty slow.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here and probably get hammered for it....but why be in such a hurry to get done with what you consider to be your passion? (at least golf is my passion) I get that 5.5 hour rounds and extremes like that are different but dang man, you could be working....believe me, I'd MUCH rather spend 5 hours on a golf course than work! It's always something that's driven me nuts a bit....stop being in such a hurry and enjoy the game! There....I'll now step off my soap box and get ready to get blasted. :beat-up:

Agree in concept. But I have a passion to play golf, not sitting in a cart waiting for o play golf. But I do anyway


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I wish more courses would do what one does here in Tucson. Every weekend they have two tee times, 7:30 and 1:00. Shotgun starts on both, if you play the morning round, you better keep PoP, those old dudes will call you out for slowing it up, they want to be done in 4 hours. Then between the end of the first round and beggining of second shotgun, they hit the course and do a once over and rake traps and such, then they send the next group out.
 
Just wanna say, just because someone can't hit a fairway to save their life and can't score well enough to satisfy does not mean they have to play slow. I played what is likely the worst round I've played in the past 6 months today. I hit 1/13 fairways and shot a lackluster 102, but I did it in under 3.5 hours. The course was empty and I felt like I played slow, but I can deal with that time.
I may not be a great golfer but I am certainly not slow. My buddies always want to play the back tees but I'm always saying why make it harder than it should be.

Ready golf isn't that hard..

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