Slow play at your home club

Then there’s the guy who tees up his ball, then stands back to give his long winded view on the

Crokes-Glen football match or the Marcus Rashford interference incident………

Just hit the f*****g ball you gobshyte!!!!

I've learned over the years to:

1. Leave my bag on the way to the next tee before putting out.
2. Grab my club and hit off immediately on arrival at the tee. This encourages partners to follow quickly.
3. Ask partners score each hole but only mark their card every 3rd hole.
4. Carry a provisional ball at all times.

Meeting golfers who I don't know or have hardly ever played with and having great chats and banter with is for me one of the most enjoyable aspects of playing golf. That said, you have to be aware and respectful of the pace of play. I find the few steps above help with speed and subtly convey the message to the rest of the group.

Most slow players don't realise that they are slow. They have developed bad habits over the years and unless someone actually points out what they are doing to make them slow, they will continue as they are.

My club is a busy club so it is always 4-balls.

My biggest grievance is when you are in a group with slow players and see that you are losing ground on the group in front. You say "Lads, we need to pick up the pace". Only to be completely ignored

Agree fully Brenner's. I find myself rushing then and end up duffing shots etc whilst the others just saunter along.

Found myself some new partners and now we just motor along and play 'ready golf' on tees etc and don't sit on protocol.

Going by some of the comments on slow play it seems if your not playing off scratch and don't stand over it to immediately hit it you shouldn't be out on the course.

I can imagine anyone wanting to start playing would find this extremely off putting.

Ye I get that and like I said at times it can be quite annoying but it happens on (in my club rare) occasion so what? IMO we can't be questioning the concept of the game itself or the course designs and/or everything cos sometimes your game takes 15 minutes longer.

People sit in traffic for donkeys and accept it as 'thats just the way it is', but if they have to wait a couple of minutes for some slow golfers the sky falls in on them,

And yes, I'm exaggerating a bit to make my point.

We have a couple of groups like that in the club too. Some are just quite old and others just aren't very good golfers and simply take more shots.

I get annoyed too when I see people being slow cos they're ambling and faffing around, but what can you say about older golfers? We gonna be old too at some stage (hopefully) and wouldn't want to be chased off the course because of it.

^ In the example above, what's the guy in the 20s gonna do? Run ahead?

Nothing worse than a ‘club thrower’ for sure.

However, the goon who tries to ‘talk the hole off you’ is not far behind (especially when your game is not going well) .

Just get outa me grill you gormless kernt.

In a 4 ball on Monday. Open singles Stableford. 5823 meters.

Two playing off 27, one off 13 and one off 7.

It took us two hours to cover 9 holes, four ball behind us were flying, waiting on tee on the 6th, waiting on fairway on 7th, hit down on us on the 9th.

Three ball behind catching them. What do you do there? Didn't feel we were slow. If we wait and leave the 4 ball through the three ball also catches us, if we leave them through we dont finish the round.

Total time for us was 4 hours 20 and losing light fast.

Its not just elderly people who are slow. I was drawn with 2 young lads (20's) last week and I had to ask them to not take so many practice swings (7 for one) and to walk quicker between shots as we were losing ground on the people ahead. Might as well be talking to the wall. They seemed to slow even more. I apologised to the people behind and made a mental note to avoid these two and try to play ahead of them in future.

This is the problem I don't see an answer to. 4 hours 20 is a bit on the long side, but not crazy. And you're dead right, once you call that fourball through and wait for them to go out of range that threeball will immediately be where the fourball were. And you've the exact same problem as before. The fourball you called through will be better off, but the threeball will have the additional wait of your stoppage. And on a busy day every group behind them in a queue will have that additional wait too.

And no-one ever seems to accept that higher handicap golfers will typically need longer to play a round. With all other things being equal, there will be the additional time of taking extra shots, looking for balls, walking left and right to your ball, over greens, etc. If a fourball of mid 20 handicappers had the same time management as a group of 10 handicappers, I wouldn't be surprised if it would take them an extra half an hour to play a round. In fact, I'd be surprised if it only took them an additional half hour.

What do people propose we do with these golfers? Say a group of friends decide they'd like to take up the game - do we say that's great but you're not allowed to play together. Or no looking for balls or you only get half the time to line up a putt more seasoned golfers get because you need to catch up?

To me there are several aspects to speeding up play. But focusing on player behaviour will speed up everyone. So it won't do all that much to help people being held up. To shorten the rounds, I think we need to look at forward tees, getting rid of hazards, shorter rough, slower greens, fewer raised greens. These are obviously broad suggestions and wouldn't always work, but by and large if we want to get back to the length of rounds we had 20 or 30 years ago, we probably need to go back to those courses. And possibly reduce how far people can hit the ball. I get into trouble far more often because I ran into it as opposed to didn't clear it.

I'd love to adjust people's perception of what's reasonable more than anything. People go around in 4 hours and 15 minutes on a Sunday morning in a fourball and they're giving out about how long it took. I know it's frustrating to be behind a slow group, especially if you can see them do stupid things. But moaning should be reserved for rounds of over 4 and a half hours in my opinion. I just don't want to listen to it unless it was actually really bad, not just should have been faster.

One sure thing about slow players, they don't think they are slow and will ague why they are not!

I gave up getting bothered about slow play. If I need to get around in a certain time then I book first thing in the morning. Home course is a nine hole so its a lottery as to how long the back nine can take. its every second Tee (1st then 10th and so on if there is a queue on the Tee.

The ladies group however have the luxury of being allowed to book their back nine tee time aswell as their starting tee time. But they are very social and like to finish together-ish and have their Tea and sandwiches after the round.

In general if people walked quicker to their ball they could take as long as they want within reason over the ball.

You sure his name wasn't George Michael?