Quote:
Originally Posted by justjim
 NJBlue: Interesting scenario but IMHO unlikely. Four scratch golfers! Again, unlikely. Four good low handicap golfers in the same group, now that is likely. In addition, because they take less strokes, very good golfers are more likely to take more time choosing which club to use, play by the USGA rules, hit provisional balls for possible lost balls and out of bounds balls, measuring exact distance to the pin, checking location of pin on the green for the day, addressing wind speed, fixing their ball marks and others ball marks and lining up their putts. For these reasons, very good golfers will take approximately the same time as less proficient golfers who play ready up golf. I prefer to agree to pickup after triple bogey on championship courses because on a par 5 double par would be 10 strokes. Now, on an executive course the double par could work okay because most of the holes are par 3 which is triple bogey. Remember it only takes one group to slow the pace of play for the entire course. The whole idea of ready golf is so everybody can enjoy the game and complete the round by a reasonable time-frame. Fore! |
Good points NJBlue. I have sat behind "better" golfers for reasons such as the examples you provided. A round of golf is not meant to be a "night at the races", and you can socialize yet still maintain pace of play. When we play, our socializing occurs as we move towards our next shots (if our previous shots ended up in the same area), while waiting on our approach shots to the green, on the side of the tee box between shots, etc.
One other thing that does slow the game down is insistence on "honors" on the tee box. We always cede the tee box to the "birdie maker", but if someone gets a par and isn't ready, we just tee off whenever we are ready. If we have people in the group who can't hit their tee shots as far as the group in front of us, we let them tee off first regardless of our scores on the previous hole.
I remember being stacked up on a par 3 (regulation course) as two seniors were paired up with two teens who insisted on honors. We had to wait for the green to clear so the teens could hit their drives, and then we sat patiently (maybe patiently is too nice a term) while the seniors hit their balls maybe 125 yards (the seniors also played from the whites instead of the gold-that's another issue). I don't blame the seniors (other than they should have played from the golds), and they were not playing badly, they just couldn't hit as far as the teens. You can imagine the delays for the rest of the round since the seniors had to wait patiently for the teens to hit while the rest of us, had our patience tested.
The short of it is that you can socialize and have an enjoyable round of golf-perhaps the term is that you want to play an "efficient" round of golf.