golfrewind.com

So I had another 5+ hour round at a local muni course. It was basically caused by the play of a group ahead of us, and mostly by the play of golfers in my foursome. I walked on as a single and joined a group of three strangers to complete the foursome. Basically, the round was painfully slow. Two golfers couldn't hit the ball more than 80 yards and took them forever to hit their ball. Ready golf was not in their vocabulary. They would take cell phone calls and slow the group down. If they lost a ball in the woods, they would take 10 minutes to find the ball. One golfer kept stepping on my line at the greens. I didn't want to be rude because it is not in my nature, but what do you guys do to handle the situation? Just short of yelling at them, what could I have done that would not have been over the top?

That is, mentally I couldn't block it out and play my game. Are there any mental exercises or thoughts that you guys use to keep it out of mind? Generally, I like to play with a quick tempo, so swinging the club just waiting for my turn often results in bad shots. The pace of play bothered me the whole round and it definitely affected my scorecard.

When play is slow, I try and match my walking pace to the pace of play so my time spent waiting is minimal. Sometimes that just doesn't work though and it can bother me as well. When it is taking forever, I try to take a little extra time deciding what I want to do with the ball.

Slow play is a killer. I am lucky to be able to play early afternoons during the week with a couple of guys whose company I enjoy. We got stuck behind an outing Friday & just shot the breeze for 5 hours. Had a great time. In your situation I think I would have split... with a rain check, if possible. Playing behind folks like that is bad enough, but with them ? You're a stronger man than I to put up with that for 18 holes.

If I get stuck behind a bunch of slow players I usually just wait patiently around the tee and get out a wedge or something and chip around for a bit to pass the time. You know, try to hit to the nearest tree if one is near the tee or something like that. But usually I play with friends so we have something to talk about, like the latest baseball game of our favorite teams or something cool that happened on that particular hole before or something like that. In your situation, with the slow people you were playing with, I probably would have left. I can't take people who seem deliberately slow like that.

the worst thing about slow players in front of you is that the players behind you sometimes make gestures and act like you are the ones holding them up.

There are a couple of guys that I no longer play with, because one guy has one speed, and that is slow. It used to be that he hadn't been playing that long, but after a couple of bladed chips across the green, the one guy would never even walk a little faster. If we played early in the morning, they thought it was OK to play a 4hr 20 min round when the pace was more like 4 hrs. After getting off the green, there would be chit-chat, the slow methodical washing of the balls, etc. I would hit, have my club back in the bag and be ready to walk off of the tee before anyone else was ready to hit. I would start playing crummy, just because I felt like I was rushing every shot and putt, just to speed things up a bit.

In the situation we are talking about here, if they were off looking for balls, and there was room in front, I would hit the seond shot to the green, take a couple of quick putts, and play on. If there is no room ahead, not sure what you do.

Yesterday, we weren't exactly shooting the lights out on the first few holes, and were waiting on every shot. Not long waits, but we were the fourth or fifth group out, so it wasn't backed-up or anything. On the fourth hole, I could tell they were already two holes behind. The ranger said they weren't behind the acceptable pace, but he chewed them out because they were behind the actual pace. They got going after a couple of holes.

Slow play like that definitely affects my game as well. Unfortunately, at least in that situation, there isn't a thing you can do. The group in front of you was also slow, so you couldn't play through(not that you would want to even attempt that with the guys you were with). Like Virgil said, you couldn't wander off ahead of them when they were screwing around because of the slow group ahead of you. It really isn't your business to give a golf etiquette speech to 3 strangers at a muni course, especially since you joined them...now if it was one rude guy that joined your threesome, that's a different story. The only possible solution I can come up with, besides just sucking it up and trying to not let it get in your head, is possibly finding a good location on the course that would allow you to skip a hole and jump ahead of the slow group in front of you, assuming it wasn't crowded ahead of them.