Tips FROM A PRO Be Home for Dinner: Pace of Play Tips

Tim Johnson, Cragun’s Legacy Courses

Golf is becoming a very popular sport for all ages and abilities over the past decade. An often forgotten topic in golf is pace of play or how long a typical round of golf should last. As a PGA golf professional, we will instruct our students to be aware of the time you are on the course. I have some simple rules to follow to help you the next time you are playing:

1. 4 for 4: If you are playing with 4 players on a regulation course, please allow no more than 4 hours to play. Some courses will vary within 15-30 minutes based on the difficulty of the course.

2. Tee it Forward: Try playing up a tee box than you normally would. You will put yourself in better yardages and easier clubs to hit so you will spend less time searching for your golf balls. Plus, you might start shooting better scores and in return enjoy your post round beverages more!

3. READY, SET, GO: Play READY

GOLF, which means, if you are ready to hit your golf ball with no opportunities to endanger another person, go right ahead and play away while your playing partners are preparing for their shot, looking for their ball, or getting a refreshment. The “honors system” can work if you can keep your pace as a group, however playing ready golf will cut significant time off your round and your group can chat on the greens and tees while others are playing. When your golf group works together to help rake bunkers, fill divots and fix ball marks for all players in the group, you can save precious time.

4. Look AHEAD: Your position on the golf course is directly BEHIND the group AHEAD of you…NOT AHEAD of the group BEHIND you.

5. Tick Tock: You should have a checkpoint of 6 holes in 1 hour and 20 minutes from when you teed off.

6. Lunc h Break: Try and minimize your refreshment or food breaks to 5 minutes at the turn.

7. Gatekeeper: Allow other groups that may be faster or have less players in the group to PLAY THROUGH. If you feel your group is allowing every group to play through, you might want to rethink your pace of play strategy as you could be on the course all day.

8. Say Uncle: Set a max score per hole when playing. If you reach that score, grab your ball and go directly to the green and putt out. It can get discouraging if you are constantly doing the “bouncing finger” counting method after every hole to replay your shots.

So try some of these techniques this summer on the course and see if you can save some time on the links. As we all know, your significant other expects you home in four hours for dinner, so do we.

Good luck this summer and bring on the green grass.