Guest Post by Brian Peña @ Red Birdie Golf
There is a fine line between picking up the pace of play during a round of golf and pressing forward without taking the time needed to hit your next shot. There is an equally fine line between finishing up a round in 4 hours flat and finishing it in 4 hours and 30 minutes.
Golf is not a fast game. Part of the fun of golf for most people is just being out on the golf course with friends, family, clients, or co-workers. At the same time, we have all been in the situation where we have had to wait after every single shot and just a couple of holes in that type of waiting gets very frustrating. The truth is, if you have never felt that before, there is a good chance you are the one making others wait! The following are 3 tips to speed up your pace of play and to never be “that guy.”
When you are in your golf cart getting ready to go to the next hole, think Nascar. There is no need to clean your club, adjust your glove, and you certainly do not need to write down your score from the last hole.
Way too often you see people sitting in their carts after their putts go in trying to figure out their score from the previous hole. It is not that difficult, and there is no math involved. Moving from one hole to the next should be as simple as making a putt, getting off of the green and into your cart, and driving as quickly as possible to the next tee box. Nobody should forget their score in the 2 minutes it should take you to get to the next tee box, and when you get there, write it down and keep playing. If you really want to make tracking your golf score easy, use a free scorecard app, like Golf Pad GPS. With a couple of taps, you’ll track your score automatically, plus you won’t have to mess with a paper scorecard.
This is an absolute no-brainer. There is absolutely no reason in a non-tournament golf outing to wait for the person who is “away” to take the next shot. What if it takes that person 10 minutes to find their ball or if they are still deciding how to get the ball out of the wood? If you are sitting on the fairway, the green is clear, and ready to take your shot, take it. It is not rude.
The same goes for the tee box. If you are there, holding your tee and driver, and ready to start the hole...start the hole. If the people you are playing with have “honors” but are taking too much time, you hitting your shot will keep the round moving. It is not rude.
The same even goes for the putting green. As long as you are not in anyone’s line and people are taking too much time trying to read the greens or talking about their approach shot, just say “I’ll go.” It is not rude.
We have all been there. Our ball lands in between yard markers, and we think it is so important to know the exact distance to the hole that we actually walk off how many yards it is from our ball to the yard marker and end up wasting time.
For most of us, the difference in a couple of yards will have no bearing on the success of our shot. For the rest of us, our ability to walk off exactly one yard with one step is not quite as accurate as we perceive it to be.
The bottom line is this; if you want to play faster and know how many yards it is to the hole, use a handheld golf rangefinder or GPS app. Golf Pad offers a free golf GPS app for Android or iPhone devices. Just download directly on to your phone to get distances to any point on the course map.
There are some simple things that you can do that will speed up your pace of play without forcing you to move uncomfortably fast and negatively affect your golf game. The old saying that goes, “I’d rather be golfing” applies to most things in life. It is up to all of us to make sure we move at a proper pace and never make anyone wish the opposite.
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