At the moment I am sick fed up of golf, well not golf per say as golfers.
Golfing etiquette and common sense seem to be disappearing from the game I love.
On Monday we had a brilliant day of sunshine so I took a half day from work, its was simply too good conditions not to play. Playing as a single I was held up 2 or 3 times but still got round in under 2 ½ hours.
On Wednesday I played in a 3 ball off the medal tees in 3 ½ hours, we got held up by the group in front over the last 3 holes, but it was a pretty leisurely round.
The problem we had was on the 18th green.
The 1st tee on the 9 hole course is adjacent to the 18th green, there were 2 4 balls waiting to tee off and were totally oblivious to anyone else but them selves, shouting at each other, laughing and just having a general carry on. Now I am not saying you should not have a laugh on the course but when players have to keep pulling away from their putts because of excessive noise and distraction there is some thing wrong.
Then came Thursday, the worst golfing day I have had for years.
In the morning I played with my wife on the 9 hole course. Not once but twice she was almost hit by tee shots from the 6th tee on the big course and not once was there a cry of fore. The players, non Scots but with caddies just wandered up to there balls. As I teed off on the 5th on the wee course as the looked for balls I sliced my drive so screamed fore right at the top of my voice, before I could help myself I turned to the group and said “See how easy it is to shout fore!”. After we cleared the tee a caddie came over to appolagise for their players indiscretions, I was in no mood for this, it was fully 5 minutes since the initial incident.
I left both caddie and player in no uncertain terms what I thought of there ignorance of course etiquette, quite frankly I was seething. Both caddies and players obviously knew they were wrong.
So after luch I then headed out to play the big course by myself. After 55 minutes I was on the 10th tee and there was a 3 ball teeing off on the 13th, 25 minutes later I was waiting to play my approach to 13 as they were still on the green!
After I putted out they were still teeing off, they had spent about 5 minutes taking pictures, as I walked to the tee the last of the 3 teed off, no offer to play through.
After being stood on the 14th tee for 25 minutes I gave up and started to walk in, as I walked past the 3 ball, still on their 2nd shots, I was asked “Where do you think you are going?” I bit hard down on my lip and said “This is ridiculously slow and I am walking in” to which they replied “Not our fault we don’t know the course” blood pressure was now on red alert.
So I walked 14 & 15 but played 16 as I walked to 17 there was 4 Englishmen in a 4 ball “Would you like to play through?” 1 asked, I said thank you and duly played 17 & 18.
Even though I had only played 7 of the back 9 it had taken over 2 hours.
Now I can hear some of you going “A single player has no rights on the course”, by the rules that is correct but what’s wrong with applying common sense ?
Common sense and etiquette seem to have gone from golf to be replaced by petty rules and selfish ignorant golfers.
Are we now to accept 5 hour rounds? Is it now acceptable to endanger people by not shouting fore?
The R&A and USGA are doing nothing to tackle slow play, neither are any of the pro tours.
A 3 ball playing a round of the back tee should take no more than 4 hours and I include the pros in that too.
Given the events at Rochester this week I dread to think how long the ladies will take to play St Andrews during the Open this year. If the LGU introduced a local rule banning caddies lining up players on tee’s and fairways they could knock 30 minutes easy off a round.
And as for players not shouting fore I lay the blame of that purely at the feet of professional men, on the European Tour you do hear fore called a lot, on the PGA hardly ever!
Wouldn’t it be great if professional golf introduced a rule that if you hit a spectator and never shouted fore you automatically get a 2 stroke penalty ???
If that was introduced I guarantee you would clearly hear the pros calling fore!
Monkey sees monkey does, it’s the same in golf. The pros take 5 hours amateurs think they can, pros don’t shout fore amateurs think they don’t have to.
Tell you what getting DQ’ed for wearing metal spikes, banning anchoring means hee haw in the big scheme of things, the solitary biggest problem in golf is slow play and its about time it was tackled once and for all.
Please give me back the game I fell in love with.
Golfing etiquette and common sense seem to be disappearing from the game I love.
On Monday we had a brilliant day of sunshine so I took a half day from work, its was simply too good conditions not to play. Playing as a single I was held up 2 or 3 times but still got round in under 2 ½ hours.
On Wednesday I played in a 3 ball off the medal tees in 3 ½ hours, we got held up by the group in front over the last 3 holes, but it was a pretty leisurely round.
The problem we had was on the 18th green.
The 1st tee on the 9 hole course is adjacent to the 18th green, there were 2 4 balls waiting to tee off and were totally oblivious to anyone else but them selves, shouting at each other, laughing and just having a general carry on. Now I am not saying you should not have a laugh on the course but when players have to keep pulling away from their putts because of excessive noise and distraction there is some thing wrong.
Then came Thursday, the worst golfing day I have had for years.
In the morning I played with my wife on the 9 hole course. Not once but twice she was almost hit by tee shots from the 6th tee on the big course and not once was there a cry of fore. The players, non Scots but with caddies just wandered up to there balls. As I teed off on the 5th on the wee course as the looked for balls I sliced my drive so screamed fore right at the top of my voice, before I could help myself I turned to the group and said “See how easy it is to shout fore!”. After we cleared the tee a caddie came over to appolagise for their players indiscretions, I was in no mood for this, it was fully 5 minutes since the initial incident.
I left both caddie and player in no uncertain terms what I thought of there ignorance of course etiquette, quite frankly I was seething. Both caddies and players obviously knew they were wrong.
So after luch I then headed out to play the big course by myself. After 55 minutes I was on the 10th tee and there was a 3 ball teeing off on the 13th, 25 minutes later I was waiting to play my approach to 13 as they were still on the green!
After I putted out they were still teeing off, they had spent about 5 minutes taking pictures, as I walked to the tee the last of the 3 teed off, no offer to play through.
After being stood on the 14th tee for 25 minutes I gave up and started to walk in, as I walked past the 3 ball, still on their 2nd shots, I was asked “Where do you think you are going?” I bit hard down on my lip and said “This is ridiculously slow and I am walking in” to which they replied “Not our fault we don’t know the course” blood pressure was now on red alert.
So I walked 14 & 15 but played 16 as I walked to 17 there was 4 Englishmen in a 4 ball “Would you like to play through?” 1 asked, I said thank you and duly played 17 & 18.
Even though I had only played 7 of the back 9 it had taken over 2 hours.
Now I can hear some of you going “A single player has no rights on the course”, by the rules that is correct but what’s wrong with applying common sense ?
Common sense and etiquette seem to have gone from golf to be replaced by petty rules and selfish ignorant golfers.
Are we now to accept 5 hour rounds? Is it now acceptable to endanger people by not shouting fore?
The R&A and USGA are doing nothing to tackle slow play, neither are any of the pro tours.
A 3 ball playing a round of the back tee should take no more than 4 hours and I include the pros in that too.
Given the events at Rochester this week I dread to think how long the ladies will take to play St Andrews during the Open this year. If the LGU introduced a local rule banning caddies lining up players on tee’s and fairways they could knock 30 minutes easy off a round.
And as for players not shouting fore I lay the blame of that purely at the feet of professional men, on the European Tour you do hear fore called a lot, on the PGA hardly ever!
Wouldn’t it be great if professional golf introduced a rule that if you hit a spectator and never shouted fore you automatically get a 2 stroke penalty ???
If that was introduced I guarantee you would clearly hear the pros calling fore!
Monkey sees monkey does, it’s the same in golf. The pros take 5 hours amateurs think they can, pros don’t shout fore amateurs think they don’t have to.
Tell you what getting DQ’ed for wearing metal spikes, banning anchoring means hee haw in the big scheme of things, the solitary biggest problem in golf is slow play and its about time it was tackled once and for all.
Please give me back the game I fell in love with.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSee, I don't understand how anyone can argue with this. Slow play is the curse of modern golf.
ReplyDeleteThe games administrators have been woefully inept at dealing with this at the top level, and it's filtered through to the point where 24 handicappers feel the need to calculate an exact yardage and take ten practice swings before each inevitable duff.
The sad thing is, it wasn't always like this. In 1962, the US Open was played in twoballs all three days because officials were worried about the pace of play. In 1966 players were told they could only mark their ball once per green in an effort to keep rounds below four hours (a laughably optimistic time nowadays).
To compare that to today, this week the US Open will start half the field on the 11th tee because they wouldn't be able to get the whole field round if they only used one tee. Rather than address slow play a decade ago, they moved to a two tee system which completely short changes the fans who pay to go to the event.
In 2010 the second round of the Open at St Andrews couldn't be finished, on the surface due to a one hour delay for high winds. The shameful truth - that rounds were taking up to seven hours to complete and play wouldn't have been completed anyway - was utterly ignored. On a day when it didn't get dark until well after 10pm (and play had began at 6:30am) the worlds best didn't have enough time to each play 18 holes. Shameful.
So how can it be addressed? I'd make a few proposals:
Do away with yardage books and written aids.
Only allow players to mark their ball once per green.
Limit practice swings to two per shot.
Don't allow caddies or any outside aid help players set up for a shot.
If nothing else, this should speed up the professional game, which would then feed down to amateurs. There will still be problems but it would at least be worth a try. At the moment the governing bodies have their eyes closed, and their fingers in their ears. Until they try something, this problem is only going to get worse.