golfrewind.com

I really get chapped at the twits who leave divots unreplaced, ball dents on the greens and unraked sand traps. Have you ever had any words with idiots who left without repairing their damage?

Can't say that I've contested any of the fools, but I'm always doing my best to repair ball marks on the greens.

As a walk-on golfer, I've never directly confronted anyone, but if someone in my group fails to replace a divot or fix a ball mark, or rake a trap, I'll "make a big deal" of fixing the situation myself. Usually one time is all it takes to remind everyone to fix their messes.

In my regular foursome we get read the riot act threefold if we fail to correct any abuse of the course!

Me and my son frequent this nice little par-3 nine hole a few miles from my house. The maintenance workers take good care of the course. But the golfers are atrocious. After a few hours of customer's ball smacking, the greens look like a war zone. Looks like mini bombs sprayed their litter everywhere. We repair at least half a dozen craters every hole. It's terrible, but the course is cheap for the SF Bay Area at $15 per adult and $10 for under 16 yrs old.

I will confront the one's I see leaving w-out repairing. I won't get into it with them, but I will let them know how unworthy they are of playing the good game of golf. No one has ever hurled words back at me. They just look at me like they can't speak english, like "whatever dude".

Da bums!

Not raking a trap doesn't bother me that much. There's no real harm there...we're not supposed to be in them anyway. I rake mine of course. Ball marks are a pet peeve, I fix mine and 1 or 2 others usually. Worse are the golfers who cant seem to pick up there feet on the greens. I've come across greens that looked as if they'd just held a Twist Contest around the hole(I think I really aged myself there).

Never had words with them, but I make it a point to repair ball marks on greens whenever I get the chance. Whether I'm playing or changing cups in the morning, I'll fix the ones I see around my ball or line to the hole after I putt or near where I place the flag in the morning.

Divots are a slightly different story...while I do my best to fix my own as necessary, usually if you're walking around finding them dug up, there's not a lot you can do to remedy it unless the course has the sand/seed mix on the carts or the tees.

I don't want to get into a heated argument with anyone either, but I agree that sometimes a simple reminder of what's expected in golf etiquette is enough. I have been fixing ball dents left by others for decades, and I guess I will just continue to do so and continue to grumble about it...

I have asked people to rake their traps when I catch up to them on the next tee. If no one bothers to call them on their bad behavior or poor etiquette then they will never learn.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. It's amazing what a little "diplomacy" can do to make some one get in line. For those who return your thoughtful "suggestions" with smart remarks, I just report them to the club pro. He will put the word on them, or ask them not to come back.

I had a buddy take a big chunk out of the earth once at a real nice course I invited him to. He refused to replace the divot after I repeatedly told him to replace it. I removed his bag from our cart and made him walk the rest of the way. It may have been a jerky move, but it made me feel better.

One person (a friend of a friend) i got into a discussion with - the bunkers were wet that day, and of course i landed right in the middle of an unraked footprint - not just a normal print, but one of those ones where the person had waggled / shifted their weight to dig in & steady themselves better - in other words, there were about 4" tall walls of sand all the way around the ball in relatively close proximity to it. Anyway, after sculling it about 40' past the hole, i was grumbling about this, and he said "what's the big deal? You only have to rake your point of impact, not the footprints you made."


Needless to say, i lost it on this guy. I haven't played with him since then.

He was one of those guys that talks during the swing, ****** around in the fairway and on the green, doesn't replace divots or repair ballmarks... oh, and he spent most of the round on his cell phone. A couple times he even tried to swing with the cell against his ear. The round took 5.25 hours, luckily he left after 15, so my friend and i finished up relatively quickly after that (with darkness looming).

Outstanding!

Even though I've only been golfing since July, I've adopted a relatively simple rule for greens: repair more damage than I create. Unfortunately, I don't know enough yet about fairways to know how to best repair all my divots. I replace what divots I can, but sometimes I think that's not enough. What else can I do to keep my local course in good shape?

Most riding carts will have a sand box and scoop on them to fill in fairway divots. If you walk with a pull cart, you can carry a pint or quart sized bottle filled with a mixture of sand and grass seed. Just be sure to have the same kind of grass seed that is already growing on the fairways. That way, in only a few days, the divot will be covered over with new growth. I think SILVER MACHINE has the right idea...fix more than you tear up. If we all did this, our golf courses would stay nice.

Unless the course has the sand boxes on them (I've never seen one on any here), it's best to just leave them rather than put in your own mixture. Getting the actual mix they have in their fairways would not only take time before each round, but being careless and putting in the wrong stuff could cost the course time to rid the fairway of the intruder as well as money for the chemicals to do so.