The R&A has posted a Survey Monkey poll to ask about pace-of-play issues in golf.
The twenty or so questions are very straightforward and most of you probably have better things to do with your time. However, I'm also curious what you think of the five minute process and the possibility of this website doing a golf media survey this fall when the news cycle grinds to a halt. Considering the state of things and the ever-changing nature of how we get information, I sense that it would be an interesting exercise to do such a survey and unlike the R&A poll, post some or all of the results here.
Anyhow, all thoughts welcome on Survey Monkey and the idea of a golf media-specific survey.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 11:40 AM
Reader Comments (22)
1) golfers playing inappropriate tee boxes for their skill level. You should not be hitting 3 shots into greens consistently on most par 4's. I'm not talking about chipping on - I'm referring to the third approach shot coming from 25-50 yards or longer. If you are you are playing the wrong tees. Play where you can hit your tee shot and leave yourself with a reasonable chance to get on with your next shot.
2) green speeds - the invention of the stimp meter has been terrible for golf and pace of play. Every course now has to get speeds up. Fast greens = more time spent on and around the greens (reading putts, marking balls, etc). Chipping also becomes more difficult on fast greens and for higher handicappers who miss greens with regularity that means its much harder for them to get up and down in not just one but even 2.
Speaking of green speeds and stimp readings - any reason why the R&A and/or the USGA doesn't come out with a optimal stimp reading for greens? By that I mean is there a speed out there that is optimal for the average golfer? Or is there a speed that allows for good playablity and also is optimal for groundskeepers to maintain etc? Right now courses seem to make their greens as fast as they can with perception being that faster is better in the eyes of the golfer. But would courses scale back speed if the governing bodies introduced an optimal speed?
Great idea Geoff to do a survey on your site. You could probably do several on various topics such as:
- The impact of modern equipment on your game.
- Where joe public sees golf going in the future.
Then I realized that slow play is all about human behavior. Some golfers just don't have a clue; fast golfers have a pretty good idea of how they are going to play a shot before they even get to their ball. Slow golfers don't. Fast golfers want to get on with it. Slow golfers couldn't care less about getting around quickly.
Despite surveys and the best efforts of fast golfers to speed up play, the situation will never change. Human nature is human nature.
To improve behaviour and knowledge just make it possible to add one local rule.
Local rule: You get a one stroke penalty for every 9 subsequent holes you play over 2 hours.
Using a blog readership yields a vastly skewed result.
Unfortunately this is incorrect, we all do! From Rory down nobody gets 18 GIRs consistently
It is the distance the ball can potentially go that is the major factor in slow play.
At least one person in every group has the length to hit the green with their 2nd on all par 4’s and most par 5’s, so they have to wait, fire, miss, walk up and pitch/chip on.
Players who have lost length know that they cannot reach and that their trajectory will be lower so the ball is not thudding down and disturbing the putters on the green, so they play up.
None of us are as good as we think we are.
The shortest hole at my course is the 14th. 150 yards from the medal tees and around 50’ downhill to a plateau topped green, 35 yards wide x 24 yards deep, oval shaped, set at 10 to 5, so not huge. There is a burn across the front and bunkers at 7, 5 & 4 o’clock. It is rated as the easiest hole on the course, whereas it is in fact a tilted version of the 12th at Augusta.
In 2010, because the next tees are fairly close, there was a debate about making this a call up type hole with those on the 15th tee to wait for the down hill tee shots and then play away as the others are walking down.
I looked at the stats. In 25 medal competitions 3,312 players submitted scores. 7 out of 10 scored 4 or worse on that hole.
For simplicity, assume that as many people get up and down as 3 putt, after hitting the green in regulation.
This means that at least 3 out of 4 people miss the green in competition, when 99% have the length to reach.
In our scratch open competition that year [max handicap of 5], 5.4 out of 10 scored 4 or worse.
Geoff and the long term readers of this blog will not be surprised that this hole is still rated as the easiest hole on the course and the players on the 15th tees play, rather than wait. Bottlenecks are for those who can’t get out of their beds.
The R&A do state on their website, hidden away on a tab about sustainability, that they consider 9 to be an adequate green speed, but they will not dictate, so it would be interesting if they instructed the Open course to be set up at that speed
Saltwater made it clear that he was "referring to the third approach shot coming from 25-50 yards or longer" when he spoke about playing from the wrong set of tees.
Based on what you have included here (70% of all golfers shoot 4 or higher) and (54% of low handicap golfers also shoot 4 or higher) it sounds like this hole plays pretty even across the various levels. So it should be 'the easiest hole on the course.'
I hope this is helpful for you.
The point I was trying to make is that players who cannot reach, know that and will play up, usually before the green is cleared.
If they are Furykian in their pre shot routine for full shots then there may be a case that the tee to green process will take slightly longer. However a more likely scenario is their subsequent 60 yard chip does not end up within 10’ of the hole, so 2-3 putts will follow. [Dave Pelz’s book published around 1995 stated that the success rate for PGA pros putting from 10’ was 30%]
The stats that were available for the example that I gave were for adult males playing in balloted medal competitions over a season, so only golfers that are confident enough to tee it up in a club competition from the back tees have entered, potentially with people that they have seldom/never played with before. With that in mind, on their own course, where overall distance is not a problem [150 yard downwind (prevailing), downhill par 3] accuracy is the issue for most golfers.
Getting up and down from left or right of any green is arguably more difficult than running it up an apron, and therefore could take as much if not more time.
Saltwater,
The opportunities to choose tees in Scotland are very few. Tees of the Day are dictated by the course. No one would object to golfers using the forward tees, but if you started going to the back tees you would get approached and questioned pretty quickly. Personally, especially if you are a member of the club or paying a full visitor’s fee, I agree that you should be allowed to choose, but this is rare.