Pace of Play (not a complaint)

[Fourputt]

I erred in pasting the original topic post. The editor won't let me change it soe I'm posting it here. Please ignore that first post.

Original intended post:

I know it's been beaten around ad nauseum, but I wanted to post a letter from our head pro to the course employees. We have had a developing problem with pace of play, and I know that most players feel that the course doesn't care as long as they have you money in the till. It may be that way some places, but this is the official reaction at the course where I work. This was an email sent from the head pro to the course assistants. I edited out any names to protect the innocent.

From: Head Pro


Subject: Pace of play

I am asking all employees to do their part in correcting our pace of play issues. Lately we have been experiencing 5 hour rounds on a regular basis and we need to do our part in fixing this issue. The 1st tee host is going to be sharing with each group of golfers our pace of play policy so the customer will be prepared when you approach them. If after working with the slow group you determine they cannot keep pace we need to take action to fix the problem.

Lately I have been receiving complaints that our course assistants are apathetic to slow play and respond with “What you want me to do about it?” Each time I hear that comment I am writing the name down of the individual that was working and when I receive several complaints on the same person from different individuals I will take action. Each time I challenge an employee they say that they are doing everything that they can and the customer is wrong. I feel that the customer may be right in some occasions so it is time to clean things up.

Please take this request seriously as I will not tolerate lazy work ethics and I will take steps to make us a stronger operation. I owe it to the customer to improve on our pace of play and to staff the facility with employees that feel the same way. The course assistant is a powerful job that needs to be taken more seriously than it has in the past. Keep challenging the supervisory staff to assist you when you are encountering problem groups.

If there is an area that we can improve on with things like native rough that is constantly slowing golfers down, let me know about it and I will approach the grounds crew and see what can be done. The bottom line is, we cannot afford to be non-caring and we certainly cannot accept 5 hour rounds as the norm.

Each one of us needs to take this issue personally and take the appropriate steps to fix the problem. Thank-you for your attention to this urgent matter...


PGA Professional
Foothills Golf Course
Denver, CO

I just feel that most courses recognize the problem, and some will even take steps to address it. My home course happens to be one that is determined to move back in the right direction. This email is at least in part due to my discussing the issue with the professional staff last week after I recorded 5+ hour rounds on successive work shifts.

[Shelby]

That's good to hear Rick. I wish more courses would take that attitude. I only know of one course in the area that will actuall kick you off if you are too slow.

[C-Tech]

I think I have broached this before, but am not sure, so here goes again.

When I was a member at a retirement community that had 9 courses and 35,000 retirees, their courses stayed full. They very seldom had an untaken tee time. They also had 2 marshalls per side who circulated regularly. Each of these marshalls had a sheet that showed, based on your tee time, where you should be on the course at any given time. It you were not keeping up with the group in front of you and you were behind time, you were asked politely the first time to pick up the pace and keep up with the group in front of you.

The second time he came around, if you were still out of position and behind time, you were asked to pick it up and go to the next tee, or pick it up and go home. No exceptions....you did not get a refund, you did not get a reprieve. Once these guidelines were established over several years, there was just never a problem. Everyone knew that the rules applied to everyone equally and knew the reason for them. I never once saw a group that was asked to pick up the pace then have to be asked to go to the next tee box or leave. People will learn to live within the rules if they understand the consequences.

A laxity on behalf of the course management breeds slow play. I applaud your Course Pro for taking a proactive stand on this. He may cost your course some customers, but I will be willing to bet they will be replaced by people who appreciate a course that keeps groups moving. I know in my case if I go to a course that has excessively slow pace, I will complain twice....after that, I take that course off my rotation.

[JPsuff]

.


With all due respect to both examples, the one crucial element that is missing is a definitive example of an "acceptable" time. If a committee or other governing body "certainly cannot accept 5 hour rounds as the norm", that begs the question: "What is the norm"?

Four and one half hours?

Four hours?

Less?

And who decides this?

Who times it?


Last Saturday, I had a 9:40AM tee time. I left my house at about 8:15AM and I arrived at the course exactly one hour early at 8:40AM. I warmed up on the range, practiced some putting and was called to the tee at or very near my designated start time.

We finished our round at approximately 2:30PM (give or take ten minutes). I refilled a water bottle and then went to the range to work on some things. I spent about a half-hour or so at the range, went back to the car and put my clubs in, changed out of my spikes and drove off, arriving back home at approximately 3:55PM.


All-in-all, it was a perfectly ordinary Saturday.


-JP

[Sinsation]

i only experience pace issues on weekends. i suspect this is usually when courses over book tee times.

[Fourputt]

First to JP, the pace of play standard for the course is 4:25 (that's 2:10 per 9 holes and a 5 minute allowance at the turn for necessities). That is a very liberal requirement. It's not difficult for four golfers to walk the course in right around 4 hours (I've done it this year at age 61 and 40 pounds overweight), so that extra 20 - 25 minutes is just gravy. I really don't care about the excuses I always hear that we had 2 lost balls on #11 and Joe hacked up #14 and took 10 strokes. That doesn't matter. When you fall behind, you should make every effort to catch back up again. You don't just continue to plod along with a hole open in front of you.

To Sinsation: We don't book any different on weekends than we do on weekdays. Our tee sheet is full every day of the week from 6:30 AM until after 12 noon, then gets busy again about 3:00 PM. We don't try to "squeeze" extra groups in. In fact we are specifically NOT allowed to do so. If the early groups don't maintain a good pace, then the course starts to bog down, and once the problem settles in, it's nearly impossible to fix. Our rangers have a time matrix sheet that tells them where every group is supposed to be at any given time, depending on their initial tee time. The reason the the head pro is getting involved is because some of the rangers have gotten lazy, and if they let it get out of hand early, you've had it for that day. I feel that they have to be the most aggressive early in the day, and make sure that those first few groups are keeping up with the times, not just keeping the group in front of them in sight. As C-tech said, once the patrons know that this is not only expected, but that steps will be taken to ensure compliance, the problem will mostly go away.

[Fileygolfer]

Pace Time, to give it a name can change day to day.
Conditions and player numbers effect it, but no round should take over 5 hours.
Hornsea GC, here in Yorkshire even have a "Target Time" column on their scorecards.
Its 6500yds and the TT are 0.36 at 3, 1.09 at 6, 1.47 at 9. 2.19 at 12, 3.07 at 15 and 3.40 at 18.
Many courses don't have the right space for Tee Times and push groups off the 1st, all for $$.

Its is good to see that Fourputts Head Pro is asking for feed-back on anything that could be causing delays.

[spankwhitey]

I play Foothills quite often just because it does have good pace of play at most times. They do a good job of keeping the players moving. I wish more courses around here would follow Foothills model.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by spankwhitey

I play Foothills quite often just because it does have good pace of play at most times. They do a good job of keeping the players moving. I wish more courses around here would follow Foothills model.

Next time you see me in the starters booth, stop and say Hi. I'm the only one with "Rick" on my name tag.

[JPsuff]

Originally Posted by Fourputt

First to JP, the pace of play standard for the course is 4:25 (that's 2:10 per 9 holes and a 5 minute allowance at the turn for necessities). That is a very liberal requirement. It's not difficult for four golfers to walk the course in right around 4 hours (I've done it this year at age 61 and 40 pounds overweight), so that extra 20 - 25 minutes is just gravy. I really don't care about the excuses I always hear that we had 2 lost balls on #11 and Joe hacked up #14 and took 10 strokes. That doesn't matter. When you fall behind, you should make every effort to catch back up again. You don't just continue to plod along with a hole open in front of you.

4:25 is a perfectly reasonable time frame in which to play 18 holes, walking or otherwise.

Your comment about "When you fall behind" is the operative phrase. Golf course traffic is no different than rush hour traffic in that sense. In rush hour traffic, each person who delays movement by even just a few seconds, telegraphs that delay through the rest of the traffic and that delay time multiplies exponentially so that people at the "end" experience delays far longer than just a few seconds.

Bethpage State Park addressed this and other problems a while ago with policies they've introduced to the Black Course and I believe they've done this with other courses there too (there are five courses altogether).

The Black had a history of slow play dating back to the 80's when it was customary to shove as many groups out onto the course as was possible. Back then the "unwritten" policy was to have three groups on any given hole at any given time; one on the tee, one in the fairway and one on the green. The problems started of course, with the par 3's. You can't have three groups on a par 3 so there "extra" group was obviously waiting somewhere and as the groups kept coming, the backups grew.

Back then, it was not at all uncommon to have a round last six hours and I recall one round that took slightly over seven hours during which I experienced backups of as many as three foursomes on a tee (not including my own group).
Being a "must play" course for decades (and more so since the Open) and where it's located, (Tri-state NY area) the Black Course is never really "empty". Between corporate outings during the week, vacationers, "sightseers", tournaments and regular weekend / weekday play, the Black is always busy and it's only closed on Mondays for maintenance.

To address this and other problems with pace of play, Bethpage introduced strict spacing guidelines for the Black Course. It should be noted that the Black Course is a "walkers only" course and always has been (and hopefully always will be). What they've instituted is an eight-minute spacing between groups which is strictly enforced. Once a group has teed off on the first hole, the next group is not allowed on the tee until the starter says so and they're not allowed to tee-off until that eight minute time has passed.
This allows people to look for lost balls, get to the corner (#1 is a dogleg right) and hit their second (or third or fourth) shots and basically get out of the way before the group on the tee begins play.
The interesting thing they also did, and this addresses the phenomenon of one group being slow and the "trickle-down" effect that has on the rest of the day, is that once every hour-and-a-half or so, they stop play from the first tee for two time slots.
This varies according to the way the course is actually playing (which depends on input from rangers out on the course) and is designed to allow some breathing room between clusters of players. So if one group is playing slowly and their pace is affecting many groups behind, the spacing tends to restrict the effect of that one group to just the "block" of groups immediately behind rather than affecting all of the groups for the rest of the day. If the overall pace is fast, they have the option to ignore the periodic two-group gap and instead, fill that gap with players.


They also speed play by taking some of the "bite" out of the course by trimming the rough in key places, such as on the left side of the first hole which usually has some very dense "lay-down" fescue in which one could easily lose their child - let alone find a golf ball, as well as other places around the course where poor shots typically come to rest.
Tee locations are variable, but only in as much as they can be made shorter or longer within the same teebox. There are only two tees on the Black - White tees and Blue tees (not counting the Open tees) and they are separate areas on some holes and simply the back end of a common teeing ground on others.

Many people have felt for years that if they had long ago removed that silly sign on the first tee describing how difficult the course is (which basically plays to every male ego on the planet) it might have helped to take some of the "myth" away from the course and thus some interest, but marketing is marketing and since the sign isn't lying, it's a rare case of "Truth in Marketing".

I also believe that taming the slow play issue is easier on a "walker's only" course than it is on either a "cart's only" or a mixed-use course. Since no energy is being expended while riding in a cart, players tend to be more "mobile" or more adventurous; helping to look for other's golf balls, travelling from one player's ball to another, pausing to "witness" shots rather than moving to their own because they figure "it's just a few seconds" (which add up over time). And then there's the idea of being responsible for the passenger and his or her needs, the issues of "ready golf" and so on. It is my opinion that walkers, by default, are more capable of "ready golf" simply because walkers tend to move in straight lines directly to their own ball and are not as likely to be "wandering" as one might be in a motorized cart.

I know that's debatable, but that's my opinion.

But in fairness, I can't say that "only" walkers or "only" riders would help because I've experienced the same delays in all situations. I believe that the courses can do some things to mitigate delays, but they also need the cooperation of the players. Many players feel that pace of play is strictly a golf course's problem and "they" should be doing something about it, but that's not true.
Just as in rush hour traffic, if people would simply pay attention and be ready to move when necessary and not allow themselves to either become distracted or to engage in behaviors which only make matters worse, a 4 or 41/2 hr. round would be quite common everywhere. But human nature being what it is coupled with the idea that golf is a leisure time activity, it's hard to get people to think in terms of efficiency.

To be honest with you, I'd be happy if everyone just fixed a few ballmarks.



-JP

[PA PLAYA]

Rangering is a thankless job. But it's probably one of the most important positions that a busy golf course has on the payroll.

One of the issues I commonly see (if a course even does have rangers or player's assistants) is many courses don't have the right people in place assisting the groups on the golf course. And predominantly because it's not exactly on the Forbes list of highly paid professions. That old saying of getting what you pay for comes to mind. If you're gonna stick a high school kid out on the golf course for $6/hr, who is only there for the free golf, you're not helping your situation. And the same goes for grumpy old men, they're not the most tolerable of people and typically have only one mode of communication -- direct. And when the shop calls on them to address a problem group, they're irked that they have to leave the comforts of a shade tree and actually do their jobs. I'm not insinuating that all high schoolers or older types are this way, just a majority of those that I have dealt with personally.

Rangering is not exactly a fun job, because it will require someone to address issues and resolve them. They're problem solvers. But when you have a ranger who is timid about approaching people, or doesn't have the courteous-yet-firm approach, then he's not fixing issues. He's actually fostering the problems. Above all else, you can't have someone who takes things personally running the show on the golf course.

We had major issues at our facility three years ago. We had two retired guys who would go find their favorite shade trees on the golf course and go hang out. We then replaced those guys with two high school students, who were too afraid of confronting people who were older than them. I questioned their selections well before hand, but they didn't want to hear it. And pace became such an issue that it started impacting our business.

I finally got the point across that we needed to be more selective of who we had in those positions. Maybe that meant paying that position more. Or maybe it just meant taking the time to find someone who appreciated the perks of working at a 4-star facility. And not only being more selective, but when we did find the right candidates, giving them sufficient training. And last but certainly not least, standing behind them when a confrontation occurs. Because they will happen. And ultimately -- their job is to keep the pace reasonable. When an unruly group challenges the ranger and tells him to bug off, that has to be addressed by the management. Because if it isn't, then the guy is wondering why they even have him out there to begin with.

Having the right people out on the course will not always guarantee that a problem will be solved. Most of the time, it will. But there are instances when management has to step in and get involved, or they run the risk of getting a very damaging reputation that has a direct impact on revenue. So in the end -- paying the right candidate a couple more bucks an hour to efficiently do the job can save a golf course thousands of dollars. It's an investment that they can't overlook.

[C-Tech]

I wrote earlier in this thread about the retirement community courses I played that had good marshalls (two per side) that kept play moving. One of the things I noticed was that they knew the courses and seemed to be in position to help find lost balls at the common places they knew were a problem. A lot of the time when we teed of on a hole that had a problem area for errant drives, one of these marshalls would be positioned to see the flight of the ball and where it landed so he could keep play moving. I thought several times about how well they knew where the problem spots were. It is hard to find a diplomatic policeman who can use all his skills to keep play moving and the customers happy at the same time, particularly at low wages. I think the big advantage these courses had was that most of the marshalls were men who had come from executive jobs into retirement and did this because they wanted to, not because they needed to eat.

[PA PLAYA]

It does help to have a ranger in designated trouble areas where pace usually starts to become an issue. The prevailing issue at our facility, however, is that we have four consecutive holes that can easily eat someone's lunch. Having a tough stretch of holes like that doesn't exactly make it possible for the rangers to be there watching for errant tee shots.

I think that if the owner had it to do over, those holes would be a little less difficult. If there's a pace issue on our course, that's typically where it is -- that stretch of holes.
Then again, that stretch is really a great test and makes a good score on the front nine more gratifying. Take away those four holes, you lose a great deal of character for this golf course.

[Fourputt]

Our tee times are spaced out in what should be a player friendly format too. We send out golfers during the first 4 hours of the morning in alternating 9 minute and 8 minute intervals. After 10:30 AM all tee times are at 9 minute intervals. On a day where a pace of play issue develops, if I have a tee time or 2 that is not reserved, as the starter I may just choose block them out and use that time to create a cushion for the following groups. That allows the course a chance to loosen up again.

I really had issues with a couple of our rangers the other day when I had a group finish 29 minutes behind the foursome in front of them on 18, and another group about an hour later was 25 minutes back. At that point there is nothing that I as a starter can do because the slow group is off the course and the damage is done. That is something that the ranger should have been on top of, and I even got a bit short with him (which isn't my job and not within my authority) when he came in to be relieved that day. It was that incident in particular which inspired me to go and talk with the head pro about the growing problem, which then led to the letter I posted to start this thread.

[PA PLAYA]

Originally Posted by Fourputt

Our tee times are spaced out in what should be a player friendly format too. We send out golfers during the first 4 hours of the morning in alternating 9 minute and 8 minute intervals. After 10:30 AM all tee times are at 9 minute intervals. On a day where a pace of play issue develops, if I have a tee time or 2 that is not reserved, as the starter I may just choose block them out and use that time to create a cushion for the following groups. That allows the course a chance to loosen up again.

I really had issues with a couple of our rangers the other day when I had a group finish 29 minutes behind the foursome in front of them on 18, and another group about an hour later was 25 minutes back. At that point there is nothing that I as a starter can do because the slow group is off the course and the damage is done. That is something that the ranger should have been on top of, and I even got a bit short with him (which isn't my job and not within my authority) when he came in to be relieved that day. It was that incident in particular which inspired me to go and talk with the head pro about the growing problem, which then led to the letter I posted to start this thread.

Most starters would say, "not my problem. I get 'em out, you keep 'em moving."

Good on ya for caring enough to say something. And good on your pro for listening and addressing the issue instead of ignoring it. In the end, it benefits both the customers and the facility.

[jshiver15]

I wouldn't suggest playing out in Hawaii if you have issues with slow play. The so called "marshalls" don't really do much about it because there are so many tourist and that is where all of their profit comes from.

Also, another thing I've noticed here, no body ever lets you play thru. I've been playing here pretty often for a year now and I have yet been waved through, even when walking as a single. It just baffles me.

I wish that the military courses would make changes, at least. I can MAYBE understand resort courses such as Turtle Bay and Ko'olina being taylored to people on vacation, but military courses should be treated as such. JMHO.

[Bulls9999]

Fourputt...is that for a private or public course? I once mentioned to our (previous) club pro about 'pace of play' in regard to some slow players....and he said there is no stated pace (!!!!!). I said surely we must have some measure of what is 'slow' vs 'normal' pace of play? He simply said a two-some or higher do not have to let any other golfers play through, except out of their own courtesy, but that our club has no stated pace-of-play policy. I thought that was lunacy and stupid, although I have called the pro shop at times to have them check on groups that have fallen back 3 holes from the group they were behind, and they've sent someone out to 'say something' to the slow group. Most people at our club are courteous...I for one, don't like someone breathing down my back behind me and will always...always...allow someone who has caught up to me play through, although my own pace of play of 3.5-3.75 hrs with wife, both walking with pushcarts, is our normal pace, but I can do all 18 in 2.5 hrs if no one is ever in front of me.

My problem that screws up my game is that I stand over the ball with club in hand waiting at address, or practice swinging, during the time I'm waiting and when I finally hit, it may not go well. I have to convince myself to not even pull out a club intil they are off the green.

[Bulls9999]

Our club has been 'cleaning up the brush' in the treed areas, and side waste areas to help people find their ball faster...tall grass is one thing, but bushes and brush is another (slows play more). It is much more pleasant to have grass instead of waist high bushes and leaves under the trees....stuff like that has indirectly helped the pace of play on our course, I feel.

Originally Posted by PA PLAYA

It does help to have a ranger in designated trouble areas where pace usually starts to become an issue. The prevailing issue at our facility, however, is that we have four consecutive holes that can easily eat someone's lunch. Having a tough stretch of holes like that doesn't exactly make it possible for the rangers to be there watching for errant tee shots.

I think that if the owner had it to do over, those holes would be a little less difficult. If there's a pace issue on our course, that's typically where it is -- that stretch of holes.
Then again, that stretch is really a great test and makes a good score on the front nine more gratifying. Take away those four holes, you lose a great deal of character for this golf course.