This is my idea.
Any group behind the pace of play regulations is simply removed from the course.
No warnings, no arguements, no excuses.
Their money is refunded on a "pro-rated, by hole" amount.
Good, fast, courteous players will love your course and be loyal customers.
Lousy, slow, selfish players will not play at your course.
-Ted
That would never work. Good luck trying to remove a golfer who just paid $100, is playing bad, and has lost 10 golf balls already.
It wouldn't be smart for the golf course either. The key is speeding the slow group up, not allowing fast players to play as fast as possible.
OK, I'll lets say it like this.
If those were the rules, I'd want to play there.
I play fast enough, not speed golf, but fast enough.
I'm courteous.
And I detest slow play.
All that stuff about speeding up the slow group doesn't work as far as I can tell.
Pace of play is AWFUL on most public golf courses in the tri state area.
Show up at Lido on Long Island at around 11a on Saturday in the middle of July.
6+ hours to get around GUARANTEED.
No course is willing to take a hard line on the issue and tell slow players that they simply aren't welcome. I imagine that the courses are afraid of losing money. I'd bet that the first one that takes my advice is PACKED and with good, fast, courteous players.
-Ted
But what is the pace of play regulation? Thats the key. Pace of play is not determined by some stop watch. Just look at it like this, if your pace regulation is 4:15, and the first group of the morning finishes the round in 4:15, you had better be prepared to throw just about every other group of the day off the course as they will finish in over 4:15.
With anything less than 10 minute teetime intervals, you lose time from group to group (I've never seen teetimes with larger space than 10 mins to say that 11 or 12 would really help the cause). But at Mid South we worked on 9 minute intervals. We lost at least one minute per group through the day. So, if every group finished just 1 minute slower than the one ahead, by the time you get 3 or 4 hours deep in the day, you're looking at 30+ minutes of lost time.
If you manage to book the sheet from something like 7am until 3pm solid (not far off target when busy courses are in season), assuming only 6 tee times per hour (most will have more) and losing 1 minute per group, you've lost in the range of 48 minutes through the day. And thats optimistic. So, at 48 minutes, if you hold the first group of the day to 4:20 (our pace at Mid South) and they hit it on the head, you're looking at 5:10 or more by the end of the day. And all that is assuming all groups stay perfectly on pace, which common sense says won't happen.
Its not that the staff at courses don't care about pace of play, we really do. Trust me, the guys behind the counter hate slow play, if only because of the crap we have to hear from people coming off the course when its happening. Its just that on busy days, if we are intent to keep 7/8 minute tee time gaps, there is simply
NOTHING that the staff can do to keep a decent pace late in the day.
Rangers can only work for the first group of the day, to make sure they are hitting target times, and keep groups from falling off the group ahead of them. If everyone is keeping up with the group ahead of them, the ranger can't do a thing to speed up play.
Has anyone figured out yet that maybe there are band-aids for slow play, but really no cure.
The only places where slow play does not occur is within private golf clubs in which fast play is engrained in its culture.
Part of the reason that you see good pace at private clubs is that members will
sometimes police themselves and give each other crap for playing slow. Also, private clubs typically don't book teetimes on 7 minute intervals for 5 or 6 hours. If they did that like the muni's in town, the problem would be the same.
Good little individual case about 'slow' play. I went with 3 members of my green staff and played Pinehurst #1. We teed off at about 2:30. By the 4th hole, we caught another group. They never let us play through the rest of the day. We literally waited on every shot other than putts for the rest of the round. BUT once I got back to my car (and this was after we finished, I went in the shop to thank the pro, and walked to my car) I looked at my phone and saw that it was 5:45. So, we had played 18 holes in roughly 3 hours (yes we were riding. If people like Garland and the other walk-nazis worked as hard as my green staffers, they'd ride a cart too) and felt like it had taken us an eternity to finish. Pace of Play is all relative.