What does your club do about slow play?

[HRC99]

For no apparent reason, medal rounds have been 45 minutes to an hour longer over the last month. Everyone is complaining.

Previously, you could guarantee that you'd be round in 3 1/2 hours max. Now, we looking at over 4 hours. It sucks.

This weekend, all cards had to be handed into the Pro Shop to have a finish time added to the card to try and identify where it is going wrong.

I was just wondering what, if anything, your club does to try to combat slow play to see if there were any innovative ideas out there?

 

[HomerJSimpson]

At the moment very little. Ironically competition pace on a Saturday including medals is quicker than with the normal jokers we get hogging the tee (first and tenth at times) at sunlight. The members have tried to police it and have been on at the culprits for months but they are impervious to it. My understanding that it is being raised formally now to force the club to do something. Apart from anything else it is against club rules to block book the tees by queueing en masse and in theory play isn't allowed before 7.45am anyway now. It'll be interesting to see if they do anything or are happy to take their membership money and as they don't affect most of the committee members and their mates who tend to go out about 10.30 do sod all about it

 

[GB72]

My course does absolutely nothing. If I hear one more group tell me that it is going to be a slow round as they happily tee off on the next hole with a couple of clear holes in front and no offer to let my smaller and quicker group through I am going to scream.

 

[HawkeyeMS]

Nothing, nothing at all. They might as well be encouraging it with some of the daft things they do.

 

[kid2]

Absolutely nothing, which is a complete pain in the ass....
They got rid of a course ranger last year......More of a girl guide really.....He had no balls whatsoever for giving players the kick in the ass they needed.....

Im putting forward that they hire Victor Meldrew

 

[User 105]

Ours isn't too bad. The marshals do wander round in the buggy and give a gee up to any groups that loose a hole on the group in front.

They did send out e-mails to all members, and hand out a sheet on the 1st tee, with warnings about slow play and with hints on how to avoid it. i.e. Mark you're cards when you get to the next tee and not while standing on the green. Letting groups through if you're looking for a ball etc.

But tbh, I don't think it's made a big difference. You can still expect a 4h+ round if you draw a later teetime. And we only play 3 balls for comps not 4.

They did say they were going to monitor round times using the computer. We are supposed to sign in before a round and then enter you're score as soon as you get back. But nobody seems to stick to it. I know I've forgotten to sign in a few times and do it before I enter my score. (18 holes in 5 mins )

 

[Whereditgo]

Not a lot is the honest answer, there is a notice on the information board outside the pro shop and a couple of signs around the course stating how long a fourball should take to reach this point (irrelevant since they altered the layout at the beginning of last year). We have a starter, who seems to only be there for mornings and he rarely leaves the first tee.

Maybe peoples expectations need to be altered, it does sometimes surprise me that player A 'expects' the round to take X number of minutes irrespective of the weather etc (our place is covered in leaves at the moment and with the winds we have been having its impossible to keep up with the fall rate, so often a few minutes are spent searching for balls in the middle of the fairway). And on medal days no-one is likely to give up on a ball that should be on the fairway, plus everyone has to hole out etc so its bound to be a little longer than a knock with the mates?

In truth it doesn't faze me particularly if the round is 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 hours unless we are waiting over every ball, I'd much prefer to be on the course than anywhere else!

Having said that I do agree and expect that a group that loses a hole should let the group behind through asap.

But if the course is backed up, should a fourball let through a two or threeball? Surely there is nowhere for them to go and if every group lets them through it will only serve to back the course up more?

I do recall getting shot down in flames on this very forum for once saying we took 3 hours as a twoball to play 18 on an empty course, bear in mind we had both been playing the game approximately 3 months at the time!

Ducks for cover

 

[CliveW]

Ours isn't too bad. The marshals do wander round in the buggy and give a gee up to any groups that loose a hole on the group in front.

They did send out e-mails to all members, and hand out a sheet on the 1st tee, with warnings about slow play and with hints on how to avoid it.

You get emails sent to you on the course???

 

[stevek1969]

Our club introduced 10 minute intervals between times in the Medals and it seems to work,but as every club you do get guys that are slow,but they just get told at our place to get on with it and stop fcuking about its meant to be exercise not a slog

 

[Imurg]

We have a group of players who are well known for not letting anyone through -ever.
There could be 3 groups waiting and they'll still look for a ball without even looking back. THis was the group that CVG nearly exploded at a few months back.
The Management know about them and have spoken to them but short of banning them there's not a lot they can do. One good thing about winter golf at my place - no too many on the course midweek.
When I played at Aylesbury Vale with Alex1975 a few weeks back we got stuck behind a 4 ball of 2 dads with 2 early teen sons in tow. Waited on every shot. Eventually we let a 2 ball through to see if they might have more luck and they got through in minutes. We never did - can't be sure what we did to upset them......

 

[User 105]

Ours isn't too bad. The marshals do wander round in the buggy and give a gee up to any groups that loose a hole on the group in front.

They did send out e-mails to all members, and hand out a sheet on the 1st tee, with warnings about slow play and with hints on how to avoid it.

You get emails sent to you on the course???

Yeah, we have an internet kiosk next to every tee.

I'm thinking now maybe it's because we're all stopping to check our e-mail every hole is what's slowing us up

 

[muttleee]

The Management know about them and have spoken to them but short of banning them there's not a lot they can do.

So why don't they ban them to show they mean business?

 

[full_throttle]

Have the same problem at my course, but mainly on competition days, which is annoying.

Biggest problem at my course is that it's only 9 holes, last Saturday for example four groups failed to complete the competition due to failing light.

The committe know about the situation and are monitoring it.

 

[Parmo]

Not bothered about the length of the round as I only play once or twice a weekend, the more time out playing golf the better.

 

[Doh]

The members tend to police slow play themselves, also the competition and handicap secretary plays nearly every comp.

He is very good at having a quiet word with slow groups in the nicest possible way.

Consistent offenders will be put at the back of the comp.

 

[Robobum]

Our club is self policing and we don't, generally, have a problem within the mebership.

As an experiment, the County Champs Chairman produced a pace of play for our course and they were given out with the card before a medal. Start & finish times were noted for each group as well. Even the slowest of groups were just over 5 mins inside the alloted time.

 

[USER1999]

Not bothered about the length of the round as I only play once or twice a weekend, the more time out playing golf the better.

But you are playing the same amount of golf, just with added standing time.

 

[bobmac]

Your club could give everyone a SAD rating
Speedy, Average and Dawdle.
Speedy go out first, then Average in the middle and Dawdlers at the back
Problem solved as everyone can play at the pace THEY want to play at.

 

[fundy]

Your club could give everyone a SAD rating
Speedy, Average and Dawdle.
Speedy go out first, then Average in the middle and Dawdlers at the back
Problem solved as everyone can play at the pace THEY want to play at.

thats all well and good if everyone can go out at any time in the day, problem our old club used to have was it was those who used to like playing between 7 and 9am were the slow ones, those of us who played late morning onwards were always the ones that suffered.

The answer to slow play shouldnt be to change peoples tee off times, those who are slow should be educated and made to speed up!

 

[surefire]

Your club could give everyone a SAD rating
Speedy, Average and Dawdle.
Speedy go out first, then Average in the middle and Dawdlers at the back
Problem solved as everyone can play at the pace THEY want to play at.

This gets closer to the real issue, I think.

Whilst you read and hear lots of talk about slow play, possibly because its "cool" to criticise it, and encouraged, so that clubs can sell more tee times in a given time span, there are probably quite a few people who wonder why others are rushing them.

Many people see golf as a leisure activity, and so don't rush to complete a round they just enjoy the day out, and would probably suggest that people who don't have the time to play golf, should make time or not bother, rather than turn it into a race.

So really it depends which side of the fence you sit.