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Back when golf courses were more compact and built for walking, you might have been able to play in four hours or less.
However, this time frame is just not possible on many of today’s modern courses, especially the ones built as part of housing developments where the routing puts more distance between greens and tees.
Over the years, golfers have gotten the blame for slow play. Sure, some of them do take too much time, copying some of the mannerisms of some of the touring professionals.
However, many times the real culprits are the golf course managers, who because of financial pressure tend to not allow enough time between groups. They try to tee off groups seven and eight minutes apart.
The problem with this tee system is that usually they are 20 to 40 minutes behind on tee times and the golfers out on the course are having to wait on the group in front of them--very much like what happens when you get too many autos on the roads en route to work and then going back home.
Allowing 10 minutes between tee times seems to work effectively from my past experience, cutting 30 minutes off rounds during qualifying for the PGA Tour.
The same thing--overcrowding of the course--occurs in shotgun starts, too. This has been obvious in the DuPont World Amateur where they tend to try to get 120 players on each course, resulting in rounds between five and six hours. From experience, 96 players (24 groups) may be the most that should go off in a shotgun start.
Of course, there are times when the players are to blame!
I can recall where my foursome in a tournament in Costa Rica finished in three hours and 45 minutes, more than 45 minutes ahead of the next group. Some groups took five hours.
The problem was obvious. They would drive to each ball in their cart and wait for the other to hit instead of parking in the middle and each going to their ball. On the greens, they would wait until it was their turn before studying the line.
While slow play is a complex problem, you can do your part by just being ready to play when it is your turn.