Pace of Play

[Kenny B]

I visited the Washington State Golf Association (WSGA) website today to finally post scores from my AZ trip this month (I know, embarrassingly late).  I read an article about the USGA hosting a pace of play symposium at their HQ in Far Hills, NJ on Nov. 12-13, 2014.  According to their website, this year's themes are research, technology and collaboration with the focus on pace of play during competitions on Day 1 and recreational golf on Day 2.

 

USGA Technical Director Matt Pringle will present the findings of a large scale GPS study of everyday golfers conducted at more than 100 courses around the country, followed by presentations about how improved pace of play can benefit a golf facility's operation.  

 

The WSGA website posted a Q&A interview of Matt Pringle last week that had some interesting discussion about how they did the study.  It can be read here:

 

http://thewsga.org/qa-usga-technical-director-matt-pringle-on-pace-of-play/

 

We have had plenty of discussion on the forum about pace of play and people have commented about the "While we're young!" commercials with no suggestions for improvement coming from the USGA.  Maybe we will see something come out of this study.

 

What do you think?

[markb]

I think it would be very nice to have some one at that symposium (although I'm not volunteering).   Hard data and hot points that can be addressed are what we need. And this is a stab at them.

 

For me, as a sometimes marshal, I found that slow play was always attributable to a clog somewhere on the course that backed everything up.   Marshals should really be called Course Plumbers because what they do is clean up messes and unclog clogs.   Golf is such that the slowest common denominator rules everyone else.    Our clogs often broke down to a few predictable categories:

 

1.  Boozy groups of any skill level.

2.  Newbies who aren't ready to play a championship course, take a million swings and are paired with someone who doesn't know when to help them move on.

3.  Too closely scheduled groups on weekends, choking the course.

4.  Reachable par 5's or 4's that cause unavoidable delays while waiting for greens to clear.

5.  Scenic or Demon holes that eat balls or cause the cameras to come out.

 

Really nothing can be done about 4 or 5, and the course can help with 3 but wants the money, so marshals can only help with 1 or 2.

 

The hard data will help a lot.   If for no other reason than it may be able to give us a predictive ability about the length of time you might expect to play.

 

Imagine if you went into the clubhouse and you saw a digital sign like restaurants or Disneyland lines that said, "Time to play 18, currently:   4hrs 14 minutes".  Would you stay or go?

 

Of course, on my tracks such a sign would pretty much always read, "As fast as you can walk or drive, cause there's nobody out there."

[Kenny B]

In the article Pringle talked about "ideal" spacing for tee times.  Said there is no such thing as ideal; depends on course.  But he said 11 minutes is where they are moving to.  Hell, in AZ I played a course where tee times were 7 minutes apart.  We waited on every hole.  I get that there are always groups that cause problems for one reason or another, but sometimes, the golf course is the major culprit!

 

The study of course flow will be interesting, but it will all come down to how the course wants to run things.

[fozcycle]

In Tampa, they are scheduled at 8 minutes between foursomes.  

[Kor.A.Door]

9 minutes at our course. It only takes one group to play slowly, and it will back up the entire course

[Hula Rock]

First of all, and I think I have said this before,  Marshells do not exsist anymore.  If they do, its some guy just there working just enough hours to get his free golf.  Most of the time he is talking to his frineds from his Saturday morning Blitz  OR it's some kid making rounds tying to beat the record time it takes to make a round in a golf cart.  Hate to say it but golf courses are in the business to make money.  They do that by jamming the course with players, as said before, all it takes is that one group:  That reads multiple sides of the break, Guy that is standing on top of his ball waiting for his buddy to decide on what club he is going to hit,  The guy who parks his cart and walks a football field to his ball only to hit it 20 feet, and the one that absolutly TWEEKS me. The 20 Handicap that tee's it up from the BIG BOY TEE's.

 

Want to speed it up?  We need Marshells that Marshell, PERIOD.

[markb]

I sympathize with you guys playing on courses that stack groups so tight.   There is nothing anyone can do, marshals or no marshals, with that kind of stacking.  Clogs will occur everywhere because the interval pace exceeds the time needed to play the hole.  If a foursome plays an average hole in 15 minutes, that's a 4 hour and 30 minute round.   In a oerfect wiorld you could have 36 foursomes on the course at one time, spaced every 7.5 minutes for even flow, but in reality you can only get 32 groups on a course because par 5's can only have 2 groups due to big dogs going for it and par threes can only have 1 group at a time.  So one group every 9 minutes is probably the realistic max, assuming perfect flow.   And perfect flow never occurs.  This means that any course that uses a 9 or 7 minute stack is guaranteed to clog by about 9 am every Saturday and Sunday morning, marshals or no marshals.

 

One course I play on has marshals regularly and one doesn't.  The one that has them never clogs so they aren't needed for flow, the old guys are there only to make sure that daily fee payers stay on the loop they've paid for and don't crossover to filch extra holes.   The other course needs the marshals on busier days, but since it's a scenic vacation course, most customer interventions are booze-fight break ups and the non-bouncer staff simply doesn't want to get in the middle of these scrapes.   They had one such incident last weekend.   A belligerent drunk causing a ruckus on 9 tee.   Multiple calls from aggrieved parties sends a staffer out to the tee, only no one can find the drunk anymore when the staff member gets there.   They find him passed out in the men's locker room an hour later.   He wakes up and goes home before COB.

 

I forgot to mention, the course I played in St. George last weekend where I encountered only 11 other golfers over 36 holes on a Friday and a Saturday -- I saw the marshals 5 times.   Purely a case of supernumerary old guys getting their hours in for free golf.

[revkev]

I'll wait to see the data.  We've pretty much beaten this topic to death.  What's being done now isn't working in most places whatever the reason so let's see if something new surfaces or old returns that helps.

[DaveP043]

The way I read the article, this study isn't aimed at the golfers, but rather at the people who manage golf courses.  If a study like this shows that by increasing the tee time gaps or instituting effective marshalling,  more people can actually play, it may cause at least a few clubs to change what they're doing now.  Anything that decreases the bottlenecks is a good thing, in my book.

[silver & black]

I don't see anything changing, no matter what the data says. You are always going to have the group of guys who can't even hit the ball 150 yds. off the tee playing from the blues..... because "they paid their money and they can play from what ever tees they want." You also have "most" of the municipal courses trying to get their courses as full as possible in this economy. My home course has people going off as soon as the group in front is almost to the green.

 

I have reconciled myself to the fact that it will take 5 hrs, to play a round on the weekend.

[markb]

I don't see anything changing, no matter what the data says. You are always going to have the group of guys who can't even hit the ball 150 yds. off the tee playing from the blues..... because "they paid their money and they can play from what ever tees they want." You also have "most" of the municipal courses trying to get their courses as full as possible in this economy. My home course has people going off as soon as the group in front is almost to the green.

 

I have reconciled myself to the fact that it will take 5 hrs, to play a round on the weekend.

 

I think you're right.   The only reason I get in 3 hour rounds is because I see no one on the course.   Any time I encounter other golfers in even fair numbers, the count goes to 4+ hours.

[Dhuck Whooker]

Looking for lost balls is a big time waster, guys I play with don't watch where it goes after they hit it, and then won't give up the search.  And other thing is the whole group tends to participate in the ball search instead of playing their shots.

 

Seriously, using bright yellow/green balls helps me a lot, orange is good too. Yet most of the guys stubbornly stick with the traditional white one, which is harder to track in the air and find in the long grass.

 

It used to be that we'd wave up the next group on the par 3s, that has disappeared, but waving up on the short par 5s and par 4s should become the norm, and it is rarely done.

[Kenny B]

I think it would be very nice to have some one at that symposium (although I'm not volunteering).   Hard data and hot points that can be addressed are what we need. And this is a stab at them.

Is anyone in the NJ area planning to attend? Next Wednesday and Thursday. I agree it would be nice to have MGS there.

[GolfSpy Barbajo]

Some courses in Minnesota have been proactive about pace of play -- posting the expected front 9 time and full 18 time on a white board as you check in, and confirming pace of play expectations when you pay.

 

They also had a promotion in the spring that if your group finished in under 4 hours you'd get a free round of golf.  Not sure they gave any out, but the pace was pretty smooth that day.

 

During our Hack To Jack program the group experimented with a 2-hour round.  We'd have groups tee off first thing on a Saturday morning - with specific rules - such as just a couple of minutes to look for a lost ball, nothing more than a triple bogey, etc.  Found that is is possible for several foursomes to get around the course in 2 hours.  

[BIG STU]

I don't see anything changing, no matter what the data says. You are always going to have the group of guys who can't even hit the ball 150 yds. off the tee playing from the blues..... because "they paid their money and they can play from what ever tees they want." You also have "most" of the municipal courses trying to get their courses as full as possible in this economy. My home course has people going off as soon as the group in front is almost to the green.

 

I have reconciled myself to the fact that it will take 5 hrs, to play a round on the weekend.

yep your statement on the whole has hit the nail on the head. I think Foz and Rev can concur with me because the live in resort areas too. The main problem I see are people trying to play hard courses from the tips and their general attitude around here is we pay our money and we will take how ever long we want to and play from where we want to. The only reason you locals have nice courses to play on is because of us tourists. But their day is coming several courses here have gotten off the motel and golf package deals and have went private or local memberships only. Like I told someone else on another blog the other day Society has went to hades in a handbasket as far as people having respect for their fellow man and sadly it is starting to filter over into golf

[GolfSpy Barbajo]

This oughta speed things up a little...