The New Tripoli, Pa., club began asking golfers to shave a half hour from the usual 4 ½-hour play time every Friday, and members are reportedly enjoying the change. Other area clubs are incorporating strategies to encourage a quicker pace, such as employing rangers, eliminating cart-path-only sections, and requiring golfers to sign a form saying they will finish in the course’s recommended time.
Golf courses in the Lehigh Valley area are encouraging golfers to pick up the pace, the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call reported.
Normally, the Olde Homestead Golf Club sets its 18-hole pace of play at 4 hours, 30 minutes. On Fridays, golfers at the New Tripoli, Pa., club will be asked to shave a half hour from that time. The course calls it “Fast Fridays,” and it hopes to prod golfers to play just a little bit quicker, the Morning Call reported.
“We started last Friday, and people loved it,” said Justin Smith, General Manager at Olde Homestead. “We explain it when people call for tee times, and they say, ‘Great, we hope you enforce it.'”
Tee backups, long courses, mandatory carts and recreational golfers lining up three-foot putts like pros all have conspired to stall the pace and convince some players to give up the game, the Morning Call reported.
For years, courses have asked players to pace themselves at 4:15-4:30 for 18-hole rounds. But over the past two decades, golf courses have become longer and more difficult, turning some busy days into five-hour marathons or longer, the Morning Call reported.
Most local golf courses have established pace guidelines and employ rangers to monitor play. Locust Valley Golf Club in Coopersburg, Pa., which has been busy since its reopening, put two rangers on the course at players’ request this year, the Morning Call reported.
“When I drive around the course, I use a cart with the ranger’s red flag on it,” Locust Valley owner Robert Ashford said. “Just seeing the red flag drive by seems to speed people up.”
Several area facilities have devised their own creative ways to manage rounds, the Morning Call reported.
At Olde Homestead, Smith borrowed the “Fast Fridays” concept from another course and plans to use it through the fall. Last Friday’s debut went well, with 80 percent of players finishing in four hours, he said. Another 15 percent came in within 4:10 minutes, and three groups extended their rounds to 4:15, the Morning Call reported.
Clubhouse personnel clearly inform players of the restriction and monitor their progress through on-cart GPS and course rangers, the Morning Call reported.
“It’s not about sacrificing the practice swing or taking time to line up a putt, but it’s all the auxiliary items that kill time,” Smith said. “Put an extra tee in your pocket, or walk to your ball with three clubs instead of one when it’s cart-path only. It’s all part of the education process.”
At the Architects Golf Club in Phillipsburg, N.J., which recommends a 4:15 pace of play, head pro Steve Oakes said the course opened three holes to carts that previously were designated as cart-path-only. That change eliminated about 10 minutes per round, the Morning Call reported.
In addition, the club has two rangers on busy days who monitor play and even help with raking bunkers, finding lost clubs and filling divots. Still, Oakes said, pace often boils down to players’ perception, the Morning Call reported.
Oakes estimated that players waste more than 30 minutes a round simply in the distance between putting the flag in one hole and teeing off at the next. They fritter away another 18 sitting in the cart for one minute on each tee box, the Morning Call reported.
“It only takes 2 seconds to actually hit each shot, so a golfer that shoots a 95 takes under five minutes to physically play the game,” Oakes said. “I do not want my staff stopping people from enjoying the playing of the game. I want them to help speed up where none of the game is actually played.”
At Riverview Country Club in Easton, Pa., head pro Ryan Driscoll began a policy this summer that requires players to sign a form saying they will finish in the course’s recommended time of 4:30. Driscoll asks players to be on the tee 10 minutes before their start time, and starters discuss the pace rules with each group, the Morning Call reported.
The act of signing the form compels players to follow Riverview’s rules more closely, Driscoll said. It also gives them less to argue about when rangers prod them to move faster, the Morning Call reported.
“You can tell somebody something until you’re blue in the face, but golfers are a crazy breed,” Driscoll said. “The fact that they have to read and sign their name to a piece of paper, it gets them to be more courteous. Signing it helps people say, ‘Hey, man, we’ve got to watch this.'”
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