[Pete Lavallee]

Phil,

I feel your pain, but keep in mind that very few courses in Ireland arificially irrigate the roughs; leading to a much sparcer stand of fescue. Here in the states it is just plain over watered and over fertilized; making it impossible to hit a ball never mind locate it.

[Phil Benedict]

Pete,

Like I say, I have no problem with the wispy kind of grass you are talking about where you can find your ball and may actually have a play!  I've experienced that at a couple of US courses, most recently at New Haven Country Club last summer.  I thought it was great.  It looked terrific, natural and was playable.  The thick, overwatered stuff is another matter entirely.  It's worse than trees!

[A_Clay_Man]

Pacific Grove used to start with back to back par 3's. On weekends, sometimes we'd have to wait for the touristas. I started clocking them. They, on average, took around 20 minutes to complete the first hole, and that was with 8 minute times. Versus the locals who would finish in approx. 7 minutes.
Why they ever sent a group of touristas off before the local crowd, I'lll never know. But I do have my suspicions.

Oh yeah, Here's abnother gauranteed slow pace policy. Have a shotgun without some way of sounding off a shotgun, inorder to let everyone know when to start. Invariably you have a bunch of yahoos who wait around till they think it's ok to tee off. It creates situations worse than all the inconsiderate a-holes out there, combined.

[Tom Huckaby]

Adam - PG Muni is back to starting with two par threes - that is, that nine is once again the front nine.

But man...

TWENTY minutes to play that first hole?

Good god....

For those not familiar with the hole, it's a 150 yard (max) par three with some bunkers to the side and a moderately contoured green.  Any group that took 20 minutes to play that hole ought to have golf privileges revoked.

Adam, you'll be heartened to note it couldn't have taken Dan, Mr. & Mrs. Sleeman and I more than 7-8 minutes to play it  last week.  

You'd also be VERY disheartened to see it as it is today, with the modern new clubhouse, re-sodded tee pad with faux bricks all around it, etc.  Thankfully nothing else has changed.  But we did shed a tear playing #1.

[Sean_A]

Pacific Grove used to start with back to back par 3's. On weekends, sometimes we'd have to wait for the touristas. I started clocking them. They, on average, took around 20 minutes to complete the first hole, and that was with 8 minute times. Versus the locals who would finish in approx. 7 minutes.
Why they ever sent a group of touristas off before the local crowd, I'lll never know. But I do have my suspicions.

If it takes golfers 20 minutes to play a par 3, then slowness on the course is the fault of managers.  These people are obviously very high cappers so they shouldn't be allowed on the course during busy times.

I am very glad I don't have to deal with all of this nonsense except it seems when in the States.  I don't buy course layout as the problem either.  Our course starts with a reachable par 4, a reachable par 5, then a par 3.  This is meant to be a terrible combination for getting people around.  But if a game takes more than 3:45 there is bitter complaining flying about the house over pints.

Ciao

Sean

[Brock Peyer]

I think that there are many solutions.  The first is to set expectations with golfers and manage is properly (not just with old dudes driving around doing nothing and but also not having retired drill sargents chasing you around).  If you are a designer with a client needing and wanting to pump golfers around, I would think that you need to keep pace in mind and keep green to tee distances short.  Operators do you need to keep rakes in/around bunkers and yardage easy to find or guess.  All in all, it's everyone's fault and everyone's responsibility.

[Doug Siebert]

I'm surprised when discussing slow play that carts never come up, other than in the context of courses that require carts to stay on the paths.

But I gotta think that carts are at best no help and at worst making things slower.  I walk pretty quick, but I'm still probably not doing much better than 100 yards per minute so it'll take three minutes to reach a good drive on foot.  In a cart its more like one minute for that trip.  But you got two guys in there, and the vast majority of the time I find they'll drive to one ball, take however long for the first guy to play it, then drive to the other ball, and the second guy does the same thing.  Any advantages they get over the guy on foot are lost by this routine.

When a ball is lost, cart slobs seem to quite content to both stay in the cart driving in circles looking.  They'll only leave and look on foot if the cart can't travel in the area where the ball may be lost.  When they get to the green, they'll either leave the cart somewhere around the front part of the green where it is most convenient for someone who is short of the green, and have to walk back after putting out, or leave it in the correct spot on the side where the next tee is, and have a long walk back to the front of the green where the ball is.

I'd love to see someone do one of those time & motion studies so popular in business in the 20s and 30s to determine whether riding really saves any time at all, or in fact makes things slower.  It won't stop people riding, but at least they won't be under the delusion that they are playing faster that way.

Being on foot almost all the time myself but playing with people in carts more often than not, I find I'm waiting on them a heck of a lot more often than they are waiting on me.  They'll leave me in the dust as we leave the tee, but they can rarely hit more than one shot before I've walked up to them so I wouldn't have been able to play my shot any sooner even if I had a cart all to myself.

Sean Arbie, Rich Goodale, et al you guys should enjoy the fast play while you can, because the evil buggies are slowly taking over in the UK and your fast play will become a thing of the past as the US exports yet another artifact of our fat lazy culture to the rest of the world.

[Bill_Yates]

I'm "Paceman" as referenced in the above article referral by Jason, and to tell the truth, almost all of you are correct when it comes to the causes you are listing for Slow Play.  Literally there are thousands of reasons, but through my research I've broken them down into five manageable categories: 1. Management Practices, 2. Player Behavior, 3. Player Ability, 4. Course Maintenance Practices and set up, and 5. Course design.

I've worked with courses in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Scotland (The Old Course and the 2002 Open Championship at Muirfield) and Ireland and shown them that in order to successfully manage the problem of slow play, you have to treat both sides of the equation - the side for which management is responsible and the side for which the players are responsible.  Focusing only on one of these will never provide a lasting solution.

Now, when it comes to this thread on architecture and the pace of play, Bobby Weed is right.  No matter what the design, the architect determines the time it "should take" to play the course.  Because the architect determines the playing length of each hole, the location and difficulty of obstacles, the distances traveled from greens to tees, and the sequencing of holes which plays a huge role in how smoothly the course plays as many of you have already pointed out.  In fact, I work directly with architects and owners to advise them during the design phase not only on how long it will take to play the course that is under design, but where and how long the bottlenecks will be under different starting intervals and how management can optimize revenue and by properly loading the course and monitoring the pace of play once it's opened.  I recently assisted the St Andrews Links Trust in helping them decide between two of David Kidd's routing options for Course #7.

Slow Play is a problem that sounds both extremely simple to understand and at the same time very complex.  Couple that with the fact that many of the solutions are counterintuitive and fly in the face of common sense and it's no wonder it has been such a difficult problem to solve.

 

[Jim Thompson]

Pete & Tom,

When I first came into the business I was a controller for an upscale mom & pop resort area course that also had no shortage of players.  The owner was a pretty tight entrepreneur who did the same mathematical exercise you are both referring to relative to maximizing profit.  And there is one major assumption that the 7/8 time structure is based on and that is that you can fill all of those tee times.  I don’t mean having enough customers to fill all the slots, I mean having enough space to accommodate all of the players.  The guys in the shop had to set aside at least one tee time every 1.5 hours to make it work.  

When we finally just accepted the reality of what the course could handle, we implemented 10 minute intervals with no starter times.  The dramatic change in business was not in the AM but in the number of useable times available after noon.  When a course gets backed up and the 12:30 time has to wait until 1:00 to get off you have in fact lost 3 tee times.  Real life, when we switched from 7/8 to 10 minute times our number of rounds increased, the number of concessions we had to make to satisfy dissatisfied customers decreased, and our goodwill increased exponentially and we gained secondary revenues from merchandise and F&B because we were now a place frequented by happy fulfilled customers.

We continued to tweak the sheets, and I think I’ve shared this before; we went to a sheet with different starter times during different times of the day.  Those changes were made based on the clientele that prefers to play at different times of the day.  Golfers, particularly better players, prefer to play between 7:00 and 9:00.  This fact is one of the reasons I favor a cross over on Friday Saturday & Sunday because I get better behaved customers on the course.  The 11:00 to 1:00 group tends to be the older Nassau crowd who has to putt everything out and after 2:00 is social hour, beer and bridge crowd.

Anyway we actually ran our sheets like this when I left:

7:00 – 9:30 7/8 minute times
9:40 – 11:30 9 minute times
11:40 – 4:00 10 minute times
4:10 – 7:00 9 minute times

We were doing 20K plus 18 hole equivalents a year in a zone that is pleased with 18K 18 hole equivalents a year AND our customers were out there telling others how nice and well run the course was.

We run 10 minute intervals at AC and did over 23k 18 hole equivalents this year despite the excessive heat in the afternoon this past July and August.  One of nearest competitors recently said they would be pleased to get their rounds up to 13k rounds this year.

I don’t know what to tell you about managers who don’t care if they tick people off.  I can tell you it costs more than they know and can’t be helping to grow or improve business.

It wouls also seem to me that in a market replete wtih courses tha are perceived to not care about customers being the caring course could be worth an extra $5 to $10 a round.  Put that in your profitability calculations.  Let see, more revenue, less conflict, happier customers and staff.  Sounds like win win win win to me.

Cheers!

JT

And another thing!

Carts slow down play more than any other factor in golf operations.  I call it the chauffeur syndrome.  The fact of the matter is just because you take a cart doesn't mean you have to spend as minutes as possible with your ass in the seat nor do are you limited to only taking one club out of your bag at a time.  Operators and the industry as a whole need to improve cart utilization and education, dare I say "for the good of the game".

[Brent Hutto]

...there is one major assumption that the 7/8 time structure is based on and that is that you can fill all of those tee times.  I don’t mean having enough customers to fill all the slots, I mean having enough space to accommodate all of the players.  The guys in the shop had to set aside at least one tee time every 1.5 hours to make it work.  

When we finally just accepted the reality of what the course could handle, we implemented 10 minute intervals with no starter times.  The dramatic change in business was not in the AM but in the number of useable times available after noon.  When a course gets backed up and the 12:30 time has to wait until 1:00 to get off you have in fact lost 3 tee times.  Real life, when we switched from 7/8 to 10 minute times our number of rounds increased, the number of concessions we had to make to satisfy dissatisfied customers decreased, and our goodwill increased exponentially...

Thanks for the details, JT. Back of envelope calculations about how many tee times you can fit into the available daylight are pretty much worth the used envelope they're written on. What matters is how many rounds actually get completed with golfers behaving as golfers do (not as idealized tokens passing through a tee sheet).

I've played at courses where nobody familiar with the course would ever bother to make a tee time on a Saturday afternoon because they knew the 1:30 or 2:24 or whatever number they were assigned would be out the window as soon as Noon rolled arond and there were still a dozen "morning" foursomes backed up on the first tee. Even in a seller's market like SoCal it can't make sense to just blithely sell 300 tee times on a summer Saturday knowing that dozens of those players will be still out on the course at dark and as often as not a few foursomes will never be able to tee off at all.

Carts slow down play more than any other factor in golf operations.  I call it the chauffeur syndrome.  The fact of the matter is just because you take a cart doesn't mean you have to spend as minutes as possible with your ass in the seat nor do are you limited to only taking one club out of your bag at a time.  Operators and the industry as a whole need to improve cart utilization and education, dare I say "for the good of the game".

I posted a while back about the hour or so I spent on the clubhouse porch at Caledonia a few months ago watching people play the last hole. It was cart-path only and for most of these guys it was like an invisible tether connected the golfer to that darned cart. Walking across the fairway to their ball you could just feel how uncomfortable they were being all that distance from the their golf bag and transportation. Almost every one of them arrived at the ball with one club and if they topped it into the lake with their second shot they had to go move the cart 30 yards up the path, switch clubs and then do the Charlie Brown walk back down to the edge of the lake to top another one.

A lot of golfers would appear to an observer from Mars to be performing some sort of dance or ritual centered on the golf cart with the actual hitting of golf shots just ornamentation. That uninformed observer would look at most courses and wonder what was up with those oddballs out there walking and carrying rather than worshiping the four-wheeled monster.

[Tom Huckaby]

Jim T:

Thank you very much for that... I'll use this as another tack with the powers that be at Santa Teresa.

But sadly I don't expect much luck.

Because as hard as it might be to believe, there does remain absolutely zero incentive for them to make customers happy.  As Pete said, for every one pissed-off customer there are five waiting to take his tee time.

We have a REALLY bad public course per capita golfer issue here, as does Pete.

THus they keep packing us in, with no regard whatsoever for how long the rounds take.  We keep coming like lemmings, because we have scant few other choices.

Sigh.

TH

[Evan Fleisher]

I'm "Paceman" as referenced in the above article referral by Jason, and to tell the truth, almost all of you are correct when it comes to the causes you are listing for Slow Play.  Literally there are thousands of reasons, but through my research I've broken them down into five manageable categories: 1. Management Practices, 2. Player Behavior, 3. Player Ability, 4. Course Maintenance Practices and set up, and 5. Course design.

I've worked with courses in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Scotland (The Old Course and the 2002 Open Championship at Muirfield) and Ireland and shown them that in order to successfully manage the problem of slow play, you have to treat both sides of the equation - the side for which management is responsible and the side for which the players are responsible.  Focusing only on one of these will never provide a lasting solution.

Now, when it comes to this thread on architecture and the pace of play, Bobby Weed is right.  No matter what the design, the architect determines the time it "should take" to play the course.  Because the architect determines the playing length of each hole, the location and difficulty of obstacles, the distances traveled from greens to tees, and the sequencing of holes which plays a huge role in how smoothly the course plays as many of you have already pointed out.  In fact, I work directly with architects and owners to advise them during the design phase not only on how long it will take to play the course that is under design, but where and how long the bottlenecks will be under different starting intervals and how management can optimize revenue and by properly loading the course and monitoring the pace of play once it's opened.  I recently assisted the St Andrews Links Trust in helping them decide between two of David Kidd's routing options for Course #7.

Slow Play is a problem that sounds both extremely simple to understand and at the same time very complex.  Couple that with the fact that many of the solutions are counterintuitive and fly in the face of common sense and it's no wonder it has been such a difficult problem to solve.

 

Bill,

I'm glad you piped in here to give some feedback...thanks!

You probably do not remember me, but we communicated a few years back when I stumbled upon your Pace Manager System and became intrigued by its concepts.

My engineering background, coupled with a love/passion for the game got me interested in what were the true root causes to slow play and what was being done to solve these problems.  I hope business has been good for you!

Sadly, much of what is discussed above regarding some of the super-saturated markets where course owners truly have no incentive to speed up play means that these issues will never be addressed and the problems will persist.

Happily though, there are plenty of other courses and areas of the country that can and will take this (and other) advice to learn how to get things moving out there and speed up play.

Baby steps...

[John Kavanaugh]

  I recently assisted the St Andrews Links Trust in helping them decide between two of David Kidd's routing options for Course #7.

Did you choose the less interesting routing with fewer options and hazards....seems like that would be your best choice if your mission is to speed up play.

[Richard Boult]

Several people already stated what I think the biggest contributer to slow play is - carts. Perhaps they are the biggest reason for the difference in the time it takes to play rounds in the US vs UK.

Using Monarch Dunes as an example again, they actually put groups out every 15 minutes and the starter doesn't let us tee off until the group ahead is on the green - and we still get backed up by the 10th or 11th hole!

The reason - they require carts stay on the cart paths. This may be a temporary requirement of a new course to give the newly seeded "fescue" fairways every opportunity to grow in. I just can't imagine that they'll continue with 15 minute spacing after their "soft" opening, but also can't imagine making the spacing smaller while still requiring carts stay on paths.

The best thing I've witnessed about this cart rule is that it's encouraged many more golfers to walk - but these walkers still get slowed down by cart groups ahead of them that make continuous trips to the cart to get the right club. The fairways are well marked with 150 yard markers in the middle of each fairway, so figuring out a few clubs to take to the ball should be obvious.

Monarch Dunes is run by Kemper Sports - the same company that manages the "walk-only" Banyon Dunes. I asked the General Manager at Monarch Dunes if they considered making this course "walk-only" too. He said they did, but that California Workman's Compensation laws make hiring caddies too costly.

Caddies have to be hired hourly employee's and can not be independent contractors as was done in the past years at clubs, this would make us a considerably more expensive golf experience than we see fitting into our local market pricing.

[Tom Roewer]

 As the Head Golf Professional at a daily fee facilty in florida i have been blessed by gordon lewis who designed my course with four sets of tees which accomodate the diverse patronage that we have.  The most important fact is that my BLUE tees measure only 6100 yds. As a result those golfers with inflated egos who "must play the blues" can handle the yardage and at the same time play one of if not their best scoring rounds "from the blues".  This allows for a good flow of play and we do not experience too many problems with slow pace even though our tee times are spaced @ 7 minutes.

[Bill_Yates]

Evan Fleisher,

I do remember you and when it comes to convincing owners to consider quality and value over miniscule starting times, ask them "When was the last time you went to the bank  and deposited 'numbers of rounds?'"  Ther real focus should be on revenue and the best operators know how to get that without making their customers suffer.

John Kavanaugh,
No, I did not choose the "plain Jane" less inspired routing.  David Kidd did not even come close to offering such a choice.

I was looking at the flow of holes and the travel distances as much as anything and offering my opinion of which option would provide the higher probability of making the day-to-day management of the course easier, not making the course easier, there's a huge difference.  In fact, one of those counterintuitive elements I discussed earlier is that in many cases, more obstacles (with the obvious and notable exception of extreme rough located in the wrong areas), do not slow play.  Getting out on the course and making personal observations and gathering hard data is a great way to dispel many of golf's slow play myths.  That's what I've done for over ten years.
 

[Tom Huckaby]

Bill:

I tried that line of logic on the operators of my beloved/be-hated local muni - that is, spread the times out a little more, charge more, people will still pay it because they'd have such a better experience - voila, increased revenue - but it fell on deaf ears.

I've really come to believe there's no hope for us here in CA, and other places with huge golfer per course ratios.  Demand exceeds supply by such a large margin that there remains no incentive to change.  

So what can be done?  Any ideas?

TH

[A_Clay_Man]

Tom, Thanx for the update. BUT...

 Thankfully nothing else has changed.

If you think nothing has changed, you need a closer look.

Alterations to the magnificiantly evolved bunkers has been pure sacrelig. And Leach's tree plantings proves the mans incompetence. (Just look at where he's planted them)
And if thats not enough, Pushing through a 4 million dollar unneeded clubhouse, that cost closer to 10 million, should.

The town is so full of cronieism that, I thought I was in farmington Nm. when i was there.

Sean, Of course you're right, but this is politically correct California. There's no such thing as doing things common sensible.

[Tom Huckaby]

Adam:

I meant nothing else on the first hole.

 

TH

[Jason Topp]

Bill:

Thanks for jumping in on this.  I always appreciate the use of actual data in connection with golf issues.  It seems like everyone (including me) feels like they know the answer to golf issues but data often is counter-intuitive.

Some questions:

(1)  How much does the expected four ball pace of play vary for a 6500 yard course using your methodology?  How much faster does a 2-ball play than a 4-ball?

(2)  There has been some discussion of using 2-ball groups with 5 minute intervals for the first hour of tee times and then longer intervals for 4 balls after that point.  As a father and a golfer, I relish playing a 3 hour round at 7 am.  How would that approach impact revenue?

(3)  Many studies about impediments to the growth of the game raise two issues (1) the time the game takes and (2) how uncomfortable new players are on a course.  These are really countervailing forces.  If a new player is slow, it will screw up pace of play and likely cause them to be even more uncomfortable on a course.  Do you have thoughts on how to best make new players comfortable on a course while speeding up the game?  

(4) Do financial incentives (such as a rebate for finishing within a certain time) work?

[Bill_Yates]

Sorry for taking so long but here are a couple of thoughts for Tom Huckaby and Jason Topp.

Tom,
I'm right with you.  I approach operators and they literally tell me "I'd never use your services."  Which to me is nice to know up front, because if a course wants to truly improve the pace of play they will take the time to learn what it will take to do so and what the impact of those actions will be on their position in their local market.  Once that is done, it's a simple business decision for them.  BUt with their decision already made on continuing to think of golf as a commodity and knowing that there will always be golfers willing to suffer, many will never change.  I work with the ones that look at golfers as cusomers and at the quality of their golf product as their responsibility.

Jason Topp,
Most courses that I work with reduce the average round time (when courses are full of foursomes) is 15 to 30 minutes.  The biggest improvement was 55 minutes.  While we always reduce the average time to play, what we really provide is reduced waiting and a smoother round of golf, one that "feels like we had the course all to themselves."  This adds value and makes any starting time of the day as valuable as any other.

A course filled with twosomes will typically play 40 to 50 minutes minutes faster than if filled with foursomes. Please keep in mind that I am alwaysworking under the assumption that golf courses take different amounts of time to play, which shoots down the Myth of the 4-hour round.  Therefore until we measure a course, determine what their current average playing time is and then simulate play under different circumstances, we can't tell exactly what the improvements will be.

You also asked about players new to the game.  A PGA study done in 1992 indentfyed those folks as having the biggest negative impact on the pace of play.  Now how do we get them out on a course without discouraging them and destroying the game of all who are following them?  The only way I can think of is to ensure that they have enough game to be out on a course and then be accompanied with a mentor  who will both encouragege them with their game, teach them the ettiquete of golf and encourage them to pick up when necessary - match play, never stroke play early on.

Hope this has been a help to you both.

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