Competitions in 3 ball or 4 ball

We are 4 balls and we generally prefer them as we have internal 4BB match going on as well… The internal game keeps everyone involved even after they know they can't win.

As for 4.5hrs, the view of our members are, if you need to be somewhere else, you better go… At best you are getting you are only saving 30 min even with 3 balls…

We are 3 balls going out in 10 min intervals. Probably not the norm but our membership allows it. An average round takes about 3.5 hrs. If you are early and with a quick enough group you can get it closer to 3 hours without it feeling that rushed. I'm not sure I could go to 4.5 hr rounds regularly at this stage to be honest.

We've been fourballs for as long as I can remember. I believe it goes back to the heady days of the early 2000s when we were very full. Its just continued on and become the default now and is absolutely fine. Some idiot bright spark on committee decided to make certain competitions three ball in the last year or two, and while its also fine, it can play havoc with groups where say two guys might share a buggy or even own a buggy 50:50, or a regular fourball where the guy booking the line on the timesheet has to pick someone to drop. TBH it was one of those usual ideas where its a solution looking for a problem.

So many of our members are not in weekly fourballs but have the same partner for years in the internal match.

General rule is earlier you play the quicker you go… Pre 9am you kind of have to go round in sub 4 hrs… The first round at 7am of the day might finished by 10:15… 11:30 am could be 4:30+…

I have been at funerals where his fourball partner was more upset than his wife…

If an additional player plays 4 shots a hole and takes 30 seconds to play each shot, they add 2 minutes to the play of a hole, an extra player adds in around 30 or so more minutes to play a round. This also means to create the correct gaps between groups, to lessen a clogged up course, an extra player should mean an extra 2 minutes between groups, so 2 balls 8 minutes, 3 balls 10 minutes and 4 balls 12 minutes, but most go for 10 minute fourballs which leads to clogged up courses and much longer than 30 minutes extra a round for the extra player.

If the correct gapping between groups is there 4s can be as comfortable as 3s, if not it's too slow.

We are always 4-balls as it allows for scrambles, rumbles, foursomes, four balls, etc.
It does lead to a lot of slow play though

We are only 9-hols on the weekends at the moment - so it is not much of an issue.

However, on Saturday, we were held up all the way around.
In the locker room after, waiting to enter our scores, I made a comment that "[golfer] is still holding us up!"

He looked at me incredulously - "did we hold you up?".
It took them 2 hours and 22 minutes to play 9

The absolute lack of awareness shocked me - surely they saw us waiting on them for every shot?

Genuine curiosity, how is that managed?

The 2-3 hackers? The system is set up that when they go to throw themselves down on a line it books for 2 members instead of the usual 1…a sort of phantom booking I guess.