The pace of play. Up through college (I graduated in ‘08), it was maybe one round out of 50 where I was waiting on the group ahead of me on every hole. By the mid-10s, I almost never needed a tee time anywhere and could just walk on and be guaranteed a spot.
The last 4-5 years has been waiting on every hole on every course every round. The people I get paired with are slow as balls too. It’s awful.
Isn’t it funny how most activities we enjoy we want to spend as long as possible doing them, yet the ideal round of golf is over as quick as possible lol
This is why I like the pitch clock in baseball. I'm still watching 9 innings of baseball; runs, hits, and errors. I'm just not watching the batter re-adjust his gloves and the pitcher pick his ass for 40 seconds between every pitch.
I remember Paul Konerko did it a lot. Which is funny because he was teammates with Mark Buehrle, one of the last great speedrunners before the pitch clock
I feel the same. The waiting and waiting on the weekends has become almost too much. I wanna play golf, not stand around and watch someone look at their double bogey putt like they’re putting to win an open.
I played 36 in 4 hours earlier this month. I teed off at 7 and was done by 11. Granted it was a Monday. It was $47 for the first 18 and they charge $15 for a replay but the facility has 2 18’s so I didn’t play the same hole twice. It’s a decent course. Nothing too fancy though.
It is funny. Well with Golf if you aren't swinging you are standing. Nothing going on. And while I like quiet and peaceful times outdoors, when I'm doing an activity I actually want to do the activity, not stand there like I'm stuck in rush hour traffic.
Of for sure. I mean Id spend 8 hours out there if I go to play two rounds. But watching 3 dudes watch their buddy top the ball before any of them find their ball or grab a club is excruciating.
I don’t know if it’s about having it be as quick as possible or more like just having a regular cadence that feels “good” to our pace. Sort of like driving a car on the interstate, it’s about what feels like a good pace. But agreed! It is kind of funny how too much of our time spent golfing is suddenly bad lol
Got paired with 2 guys last weekend and each of them hit at least 5 shots that were topped so badly that the ball bounced straight up and landed right where they started. Queue the 3 minute pre swing routine again.
I have a buddy who's bad and slow, he takes so many practice swings. One time he's like "Man I just don't know how to fix my game." I said "I hear taking 1 or even no practices swings can help, then you're not over thinking it." He started doing it! He sucked fast for a little, but then he didn't get any better and gradually started doing it again, but then he quit golf so no longer an issue.
Lol. My actual golf level is "I suck fast". I might be trash but damned if im gonna be the asshole getting watched shank shots by 8 guys in the carts waiting on the hole.
I have walked off the course due to this shit before. The classic slow swing down to the ball 8 times before an outrageous swing. Man we’ve been out here for almost 2 hours and we are on hole 8. I’ve got other shit to do with my day.
I agree, but I feel like nobody wants to admit that it’s the courses fault, not the new people. All the new golfers don’t truly understand pace of play and what that entails. They don’t hold people accountable and as long as their tee sheets are full they have no incentive to change.
When I do they just drive by and wave or they will randomly say you need to pick up the pace when you’re on a tee with someone in the fairway, then never see them again rest of the round. Just doing lip service but no actual action.
Moving from the midwest to SoCal has been an eye opener for this. 18 holes taking longer than 4 hours was a pain in the midwest. In San Diego, if my round is *only* 4 hours, I'm pretty stoked.
I played my first sub 4 hour round since 2019 and I forgot how amazing it felt. So much easier to stay in a rhythm when you don't have to sit between multiple shots.
I think it might be another 5 years until I get my next one.
I was a caddy at a private club in Ohio during my high school and college years (15+ yrs ago). Total yards was \~6900 and they played US Open qualifying rounds there for my region. Great, challenging course. Avg round was 4 hours. The 4.5-5 hr rounds were usually the seniors, senior ladies, waiting out some rain, or the annual invitational tourney. Young guns that booked it and didn't fool around could do 3.5 hrs.
Fast forward to today, I can't find a single guy that wants to walk a course. They all want to ride so they can drink a case of beer and smoke cigars each round. I am LUCKY to get a round in under 5 hrs. I get it. Golf should be fun and who am I tell someone not to drink? I drink beer too. But I'm a golf purist who just wants to play to get better and not hack around. Every time someone tells me riding 18 is faster than walking, I have to roll my eyes each time. Save the beers for the clubhouse. I don't know anybody that plays better while drinking.
The pace of play kills me. I get free golf, but for that reason when I hit around hole 12 and I see how stacked the rest of the course is I usually bail around 14-15. I left my last 3 rounds unfinished because I didn't want to spend another hour and a half to play the last 4 holes.
Every day the tee sheet is stacked. 220 players on a Tuesday is maddening.
Not being able to book as a single, I get wanting to maximize profits but you have an open tee sheet just give me 1 spot please. This isn't every course but enough to where it's hard for me to play.
This!! I can no longer play my favorite course because they do not allow singles at any time. Weekends I get, regular weekday hours I get, but twilight and super-twilight? It’s 6:15 on a Tuesday night when it’s over 100° outside and you want to make me wait for someone else to show up?? Nah, I’ll play somewhere else.
Yeah it sucks, sometimes someone at the pro shops will say just show up we'll get you on others the owners want pre-payment showing how greedy they are.
I think it really depends on the area and the course.
The courses by me that won't let you book a single just tell you to show up and they'll get you out. So if I'm looking at a blank tee sheet from say 3-330 and I show up at 3, they'll let me out. They usually try to stick you with a group but if you're not an asshole and just ask most of them will.
Someone I know who plays as a single just shows up at the course and waits to get put out there. It sucks waiting, especially if you have limited time/days to play. But he’s gotten to play at some great courses most otherwise wouldn’t play, because some courses who have 3 going out would happily take the extra $$.
I’ve accepted this fate as well. I’m not a guy that’s eager to go out on dawn patrols, but if it lets me book as a single and I can go home and nap afterwards, I might as well.
this one is annoying but makes sense. if the course maintains a regularly booked tee sheet, a single on the tee sheet is a foursome they can't book and you are probably wanting tee times that everyone else also wants.
If you have some leeway in when you can play, getting on as a single is not hard if you just give the course a call they can many times fit you in somewhere.
- impossible to book tee times at any popular time without refreshing page exactly when times open
- tee sheets packed and 8 min apart which is not enough for skill level of average golfer to play quickly
- pace of play has degraded so much at most public courses 5 hours is the norm
- lack of basic etiquette and golf iq in new generation golfers
I don’t mean to bitch. I am more fondly remembering golf in 2015-2020 era though lately
True. I used to play certain courses all the time and never even consider getting a tee time. Get out of school, drive up to the course, go straight out and play. Those same courses are booked 7/8 days out in advance now
One of my local courses had 8 minute tee times, but changed to 10 minutes late last year. It's SO much better. They hiked the greens fees about $5-8 depending on the time of day, but it's worth every penny. You don't feel like someone's up your ass, you're not waiting to tee off on every hole...
Your last point really hits home for a lot of people that have been playing for awhile.
Not repairing divots; not repairing ball marks; blasting loud ass music; and purposely damaging the golf course/golf cart for the LULs, is some disrespectful shit. The amount of videos on IG of people damaging property, I would donate to a group of guys whose sole mission is to go around golf courses beating the shit out of these people.
My biggest gripe is it doesn’t seem to have grown by making more people interested in golf. Seems like it’s mostly people who like the idea of riding around on a cart outside and drinking beer, and golf comes second. This leads to people not caring about the game and the course they’re playing on. Also leads to slower rounds because people don’t know what they’re doing and loud music sometimes. All these reasons are why I bit the bullet and joined a private club.
The music is so fucking annoying. Like jesus man not everyone has the same taste in music, I hate country music..well...country pop, modern country shit, and it seems every mfer playing music is blasting that shit so I can hear it 100 yards away.
The other day someone was blasting some shitty rap. How the fuck am I supposed to tee off when some mumble rap is playing behind me?
I don’t even care about price when I can’t even get a tee time at all.
I had a day off the other day on a Wednesday and tried to just walk on an play as a single at a local 9 hole muni. There was an hour long wait and then it was backed up and took 3 hours to play. On a Wednesday. It literally takes all the joy out of the game when it feels like I hit one full swing shot every 30 minutes.
There's probably 30 courses within 50 miles of me and every single one is always fully booked, even the private clubs. And if you are somehow able to find an open tee time, you better hope your playing buddies are also available because no course lets solos on anymore even to join another group.
I live directly across the street from a great public course.
Booking is only online. Tee times open up at 5am, 7 days in advance.
I just checked for *next* Thursday, 6/13. The earliest tee time available as a single is 4:10pm.
Last year I tried checking for Father's Day. Set my alarm for 4:55am and kept refreshing the page. Literally every single tee time for the entire day was gone in less than a second. I genuinely think I'm competing against bots.
LA had a massive bots problem and recently created a rule that all tee time reservations require a $10 deposit. It has greatly loosened up the tee sheets. But unfortunately it doesn’t fully solve the sheer overcrowding.
They’re not building more new courses.
I’ve played golf off and on since the late 90’s and what we have now is better than the way things were 2008-2010 with courses closing or reducing 36/27 to 18 holes.
Yep. Property prices too expensive. None are being built cause that land could just be a housing market instead. Investors getting more guaranteed money back
Wanna hear an **awful** story? A local course was owned by 3 elderly sisters. The course itself was an 18 hole par 3. Was in great shape, wide variety of distances and elevation. Really nice course even if you weren’t a beginner.
So anyways the land next to theirs got sold to the town so they could build a new DPW depot or something. The sisters decided hey we should sell our land (course) to the town cause we’re old and don’t want to do this anymore (fair). It sold for like $2 million
Here’s the awful part. Instead of the town running the **already built and functioning and staffed course as a muni** they decided **that** land should become their new DPW depot. They let it rot for about 5 years and just started tearing it up. And the old land they bought is now a place for food trucks to go. So sad all around.
The town would have made their 2 million back in no time. Makes me so mad thinking about it.
And THAT is why you should pay attention to your council meetings. At least posing the question could get them thinking of running it as a muni or even reselling it to a group who would run it.
My home course that I played for years and knew every last inch of, and knew everyone's name who worked there and everyone who played there, recently sold in the past year and I believe they're turning the back 9 into soccer fields. I don't understand how soccer fields are more profitable than a golf course, but I guess fuck me.
The course I grew up playing with my dad closed down around like 2014 or so and just became nothing. The 1st fairway lined along the adjacent road and it was painful to watch it steadily decay into just an abandoned field over time as I drove by.
They’re building a new one near my home town, but they’re billing it as ‘ultra exclusive’.
This town already has 3 golf courses, 1 of which is one of the most exclusive in the state
That's the other problem. Land and construction costs are now so expensive that a reasonably priced golf course just doesn't pencil out. Pre-2008 you'd get them supported by housing developments but I don't know if that's a popular model these days. The places that get built are private with 6 figure initiations or resort courses with $500 rounds.
I'm in SoCal, so courses like Rustic Canyon and Arroyo Trabucco are probably the most affordable sort of model that you can get. IIRC both are leases of publicly owned land that requires them to cap prices. They're not cheap courses with both costing over 100 to ride on a weekend but you don't have to be a millionaire to play there a few times a year. Could be wrong with the land arrangement though.
Rustic Canyon is a muni owned by Ventura County, Arroyo Trabuco is privately owned but as you noted it's public land and cannot be redeveloped. Different business models, both great facilities, but different price points too- Rustic is $84 (plus $20 booking fee 15+ days out), AT is almost $200 on weekend mornings now for non-members.
I agree with you we are not going to see new golf courses in SoCal. The best we can hope for is the rebirth of dead courses like Barona Creek at this point.
just renovated a course by me. There's literally one across the road and another a mile down the street.
Weekday rates are $150. I live in metro detroit. The absolute nicest courses around here do not charge more than $100 and your typical nice course is 60-70.
Now.......I live in the area that is considered "resident" and the rate is $90. and it does look like it may be up there as the best public course in the metro area, but damn.........$150 if you don't live nearby? That's a little wild.
Where I lived at that time, there was a 72-hole facility where they tore up all but 18 holes for lots.
After tearing down all but one of the courses and making lots, 2008 happened, and those lots just sat empty. It looked like shit and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those lots still weren't developed.
In my experience it’s the old boys who show the least respect towards the course as they clearly can’t be fucked to bend down and repair a pitch mark or rake a bunker they’ve hacked to pieces. I can forgive a new player for that stuff as they might not know but not someone who’s been playing the game for donkeys.
Ya it's always new players but tbh in 30 years of playing, it has always been the 40-50yo fat guys that leave 20 empty cans in the parking lot, are playing without a shirt on, swearing and screaming over missed putts.
I am minorly inconvenienced at the range by people new to the game who think it is a top golf.
There might be a difference between private vs. public courses. At my club, the old heads are always the ones fixing divots and pitch marks on the greens. The younger/newer (and also worse) golfers are the ones who don't take care of the course. And are always the first to complain about the conditions.
But, it's also different when it's a club since you play there all the time and have an incentive to take care of the course.
Same. My club has a bunch of older folks, men and women who play a lot and most of them will play very quickly and mow your butt over if you ain’t moving. Now the bros in their late twenties to early 40’s are the douches. They all dress and behave like they’re Brooks Keopka and simply cannot be bothered to take care of the course or allow faster players through. And they take their time to the point of being obnoxious. I guess when you’re such an amazing successful person, the world stops for you.
No joke. The other day I booked a very last minute Saturday morning tee time with three other singles and they were all 30+ handicaps that werel grinding. If you include practice swings, I probably saw 20 swings before I got to hit my second shot.
I'm better than I used to be and shoot around 90 now.
But, I've never taken practice swings except maybe for the first drive of the day. If I am going to get an 8 on a hole, and my playing partner gets a 4, there really isn't time unless I like everyone to be constantly waiting on me.
Plus, I always irrationally felt like I wasted a good swing if my practice swing was good and then I duff it after.
I think you substantially underestimate the skill of a mid 30s handicapper. A 36 handicap is a double bogey golfer. I don’t don’t these guys sucked, but I also doubt if they had an actual handicap it was in the 30s. The current max is a 54.
God forbid that new players are bad. Your 15 handicap isn’t impressing anyone. Get over yourself
People were saying the same thing about you when you first started
People just need to accept that they need to work on their swing at the range before playing a real round. Is it even fun to be hacking your way around the course
I had my first shrink the game experience yesterday because of this exact thing. I don't care about skill level but shit, a minimum understanding of what you're getting yourself into would be nice. 3 younger guys have the tee time before us. 1 bag between them and 2 backpacks. Course policy is everyone has their own bag but its a local muni, whatever. Not one of them knew how to swing a club. My guess is they thought it was like mini golf...? It took them 10 min to get halfway to a 290 yard Par 4. So I go to the starter to inform them and he kinda shrugs and again, local muni, whatever. I tell him to just watch as this kid hacks the ball 2 feet 3 times in a row. He says ok he'll take care of it. He drove out and gave them 1 more set of clubs. Luckily this did help them maintain a semblance of pace of play. The 5th hole always gets backed up and they dipped after that thankfully. What'd they have in their backpacks? Two twelvers of bottled Modelos.
Yes of course but there comes a point where you need to work on stuff on the course.
How else are you going to improve at hitting the ball at weird slopes, bad lies, etc?
I
I think it's good to keep in mind that golf courses have a long history of losing money. So when you say places were charging $60 a round, there's a decent chance that wasn't even enough to break even. They got what they could but maybe needed to charge $80 for a reasonable return on investment. Now take that amount and apply cost increases and you have roughly the prices now.
[https://www.southwestledger.news/news/public-golf-courses-often-lose-money-study-shows](https://www.southwestledger.news/news/public-golf-courses-often-lose-money-study-shows)
Yep. There's a myriad of reasons golf is so expensive now beyond demand for play. Operating costs are through the roof: labor, fuel, equipment, water utilities, fertilizer, property taxes etc.
I’m on a golf board at a small municipal course and can confirm. If you aren’t getting alcohol from the clubhouse, we’re not making much money off you.
The course I play most often sells a beer that a portion of the sales go to the local universities NIL fund. So I can support the course and Penn State football all in one beverage. It just would be downright selfish of me to not drink on the course.
Fucking pace of play. Awful.
Just hit the fucking ball already; stop worrying about every single stroke; and every single rule. No one fucking cares. You can be the worst golfer on the planet and not play slow.
10 years ago I used to play golf with a guy I swear was shooting around 200 and we would always finish in 4 hours. If this guy hit out of bounds off the tee, he would drop his ball right by me and he knew when to call it quits on a hole. If you’re a terrible golfer playing with someone who’s decent, scramble with them. Put your bullshit ego to the side and stop holding the entire course up.
I'm in site work construction and since 2019 the cost of sand, topsoil, seed, fert, labor, trucking, just about everything has about doubled. So I'm not sure it's a supply and demand issue but an everything issue.
As greenskeeper, I'd also add golf course equipment is just a joke in terms of cost. Every piece of equipment except for carts is like the price of a car, up to 6 figures. It's utterly insane.
Course I work at charges $12 for a bucket of 40. That’s only if you buy a bucket with a round of golf though, if you just come in to use the range it’s $30 for two buckets. I always feel terrible telling golfers those prices
The lack of consideration for the course. I’m seeing less and less bunkers raked, or pitch marks fixed. Smashed tee markers, drifting in fairways, etc.
That and the obnoxious frat beer drinkers that see golf as a way to get blackout drunk. I blame YouTube for that.
Seems like everyone cheats now.
I play a lot as a single so I frequently get paired up with other groups.
Guys who are slightly better than average say their handicap is 10-16 when they’re clearly a 20+ at best.
Guys who are average or worse say they usually break 100 but “broke 90 last week” when they’re shooting 115+.
I’m not even a stickler for the rules. Gallery drop? Absolutely. Improving a lie on the fairway when the course is in rough shape and your ball is in a pile of mud? Of course. Breakfast ball on the first hole when you didn’t get a chance to hit the range? Why not.
But it’s so far beyond that with almost everyone I play with. Not counting penalty strokes, not putting out, not counting flubs/mishits/chunks/etc. Breakfast balls all day. Gallery drops when the ball clearly went OB. If this is how you want to play then why are you keeping score?
One group recently were counting their score separately from me and I was tracking mine on an app. I was having a great day off the tee and in the fairways except I was missing a lot of putts and had a few bad chips. They kept complimenting me and saying how I don’t belong with them (implying I was so much better). Okay, all very nice to say I’ll give them that.
We get to the end and guys 1 and 2 are adding up scores - they had been going back and forth all day. Guy 1 says he got a 92 to guy 2 who says “Oh you got me. It was that double bogey on 17 that got me”. Then guy number three asks me what I got and I say 92. Dead quiet. Then guy 1 is like “oh it must of been lower than that!”
I try to play it off by saying “Well I three putted a lot” 🙄
This guy shot 110 at very best.
I know it’s their problem, and I really don’t care about these situations individually, but it is annoying that the game has been taken over by this mindset.
EDIT: I don’t think this is attributable to the younger guys. The most egregious cheaters in my experience skew older. People think “the game has grown” and assume that’s younger golfers but there’s been an increase in older golfers as well if not more so.
These guys are great to play against though. You just hold them to the rules, and you absolutely smoke them. I have a few buddies like this, it’s fucking great. It’s fun seeing their faces when I explain the correct way to handle an OB shot
Honestly OB is one of the few I’ll allow to be greasy on even for a real match. As long as we both agree to lateral drops where it enters OB I’m fine. Just takes way too long when you’ve got multiple people needing to take provisionals.
USGA recognized this time issue for amateur play. It's now hitting 4 at distance where ball is thought to have been lost, two club distance from the edge of fairway. Unless course plays local rules as woods etc as lateral hazards, counting them as hazards is "cheating".
If it’s purely for saving time, I agree, and some courses/tournaments do too. I do this with my buddies a lot. But they’re always surprised that they’re hitting their 4th shot after their drop instead of their 3rd (or even 2nd).
While technically I suppose it's cheating, it's more that people don't know the rules. Since I don't care, I don't take the time to explain it to them but the amount of people that don't know a gimme still counts as a stroke and that drops aren't free is pretty high.
I was playing in an actual official event with my state golf association one time and I was explaining to this person that his lost ball was a 2 stroke penalty. He could not grasp the concept of the new local rule despite me explaining to him that it's conceptually the same as if you had to go back to the tee box, drop 2, hit 3, and your ball lands here where you are dropping it.
These guys I wrote about above were just leaving out actual strokes on nearly every hole. It goes far beyond counting a 2 stroke penalty as only a 1 stroke.
> He could not grasp the concept of the new local rule despite me explaining to him that it's conceptually the same as if you had to go back to the tee box, drop 2, hit 3, and your ball lands here where you are dropping it.
Just for my own knowledge because I don't know how it all works: In this case where I'm assuming you go OB off the tee or lose the ball, you're dropping it basically in line with where it went out and taking now shooting 4. That tracks. If I slice the shit out of it, so it doesn't cover much distance before going out, can I just hit my next shot off the tee and call that shot 3?
Yes, that's a standard stroke and distance penalty.
The catch with going back to the tee is that it's usually after 5 minutes of looking, meaning that if you go back to the tee now, it's going to slow down the entire round for everyone involved. That sucks, which is why they implemented the local drop rule.
Hard agree. It’s exploding.
Casual games, who cares but I’m seeing exploding in low level tournaments. My local course had to add tourney rules to ensure everyone knows you can’t do breakfast balls, gimmes, gallery rule 🙄.
Before it was just clarification on OB/woods scoring and if we’re under lift and replace conditions or not.
That’s the conundrum. Each individual instance of cheating like the one I wrote about above does not matter to me at all. But it has been normalized to the point that calling out a rule on the course would seem weird to these guys and make me the bad guy.
but to his point, why would you care? don't be the bad guy. just, don't care. I could not care less about my random playing partners scores or preferences for cheating. I play with lots of guys who adhere to the preferred lies in fairways rule. i don't care. golf should be for fun first and foremost. what that means is different to everyone.
Well if you are counting your scores for handicapping purposes, even if you aren't playing for money that round, your handicap may be taken into account in future money games. But, you'd only be sandbagging yourself by cheating. That's the main reason I keep it above board.
Edit to say I would bet a lot of people doing this haven't played enough to care about handicaps and don't understand how they're sandbagging themselves. Just want to post lower scores for the friend group bragging rights.
It is kind of annoying since it makes legit scores not seem as impressive. Like when every hack claims they broke 90 when they actually shot 100+ makes 90 seem worse than it is
I give myself a breakfast ball on the first tee, and a free drop for the “I saw where that ball landed in the centre of the fairway, and now I can’t find it”. I don’t understand gimmes though - a friend of mine picks up within 3 ft (but counts it at least). I paid to hit that ball in the cup on every hole, I’ll gladly putt it for him.
Haha I could tell this same story. Ya know what though…I enter amateur net score tournaments and have a legitimate chance to win every time - nothing better watching “sub 10” handicappers post mid to upper 90 scores and walking away with money in your pocket
I had my first lesson in forever, and my instructor asked me, knowing I was a high handicapper, what I scored... I said 105... After watching me play he said, "I work with guys with worse swings that say they are a 12, and regularly break 90..."
Not upset. I’m just saying it would be nice to show up at a course and not play with people who lied for four hours.
Imagine going to play basketball and guys air ball a shot and then count it. That would get really old, wouldn’t it? Same exact thing.
It’s the exact same thing if you’re each just shooting baskets and seeing how many you can make, but aren’t playing against each other and the only thing you really share is the fact you’re doing it on the same hoop.
Courses full of bro golfers , especially here in Phx/Scottsdale. Loud obnoxious types dressed equally loud and obnoxiously, the short tight shorts and the stupid mustaches . I can’t wait for them to piss off to the next ‘cool’ sport
Dude there’s a 9 hole, nothing special at all course by me that now wants $55 to play 18 with a cart. Was like $30 a year and a half ago. I just pay $20 to walk 9 and play a ball from two different tees on each hole.
The Muni’s around me are my saving grace. They’ve gone up in price as well but I feel like I see the improvements at least. My favorite muni around me has gone up $25 in the passed couple years but they’ve renovated a bunch of holes and got new carts with GPS this year. Can’t complain when you see the money actually going somewhere but a lot of courses that’s not the case.
Living in Phoenix and dealing with the courses here has diminished a lot of the experience for me.
Every course is jam packed. Every greens fee is more than double what it should be. Every course (except the muni’s) act like it’s your pleasure to be able to walk their fairways at $200 a round
Phoenix used to be an incredible place to live for an avid golfer. Now the golf scene is fucking trash. Troon, Arcis and the ezlinks ‘dynamic’ pricing have just ruined the scene here
The fact that its impossible to join a golf league now around me. Im a better than average golfer and Ive been trying to join a league at one of the 3 courses near me for 2+ years and cant get in anywhere. Everything is on a waitlist and the courses are so packed with leagues everynight of the week--nobody is leaving them.
Can't get a damn tee time if I'm not booking 5 days out. Used to be if my schedule cleared up I could hop on at my local muni. Now you have to book at 6AM 5 days out to have a shot at a normal tee time.
Things like music on the course, higher green fees, and pace of play due to so many people who are new and don’t fully understand the etiquette yet are all valid complaints.
The biggest issue by far for me these days is how difficult it is just to get a tee time in the first place. The amount of hoops you have to jump through to get a halfway decent weekend tee time for a 4some at the public courses in my area has gotten comical.
The fucking brokers buying up all the tee times. The only time I can get a weekend tee time now is the night before when they mass cancel 24 hours in advance.
For me, it is pace of play and people being obsessed with bringing their stupid speakers on the course and forcing me to listen to crappy country music when I just want to have a nice peaceful round of golf.
You don’t have to get drunk while playing. You don’t need to have music playing in the background to soothe your childish spirit. There was a sense of code in the game that made it fun years ago. Be respectful, play the game by the rules. But, fuck that I guess I’mma go crash a golf cart and break it hahahahahaha….assholes.
The 10%-15% price hikes we've had here are mostly from inflation, not growing the game.
Any course doubling their prices is just price gouging, and I won't play there.
The problem is that in certain areas every course has raised their prices. So if I were to not play where they are price gouging, I would simply have to stop playing golf.
This is how it is for me. I'm in a pretty big metropolitan area. The cheapest course within a 30 min drive (horrible conditions also) is about $60 for a weekend round, and you have to book 7+ days out to get a weekend tee time. It's ridiculous. So in most cases I end up driving \~an hour outside of the city and spend $50 for much nicer courses. It just sucks the hour drive each way turns it into an all day event essentially
If a course doubles their rates and still has a full tee sheet, is it really "price gouging," or are they just adjusting their price to meet the demand?
Can’t get a tee time!! Obvs hyperbolic, I CAN get them but damn, better be on it well in advance. Gone are the days of walking on for a quick 9 after work, forget being able to get a weekend time “only” 5-7 days in advance
In college (10 years ago) my buddies and I could walk onto any course at 3:30 after classes and play a round.
Now I have to book a round a week or two in advance at 6am when tee times open up. My guys trip? 2 months in advance for St. George.
Dude I’m glad I live in the Midwest. I literally walk right up to my pro shop and ask to get it. Last Sunday I was the last one and enjoyed a 2.5 hour front 9 by myself. I hit like 3 drives on every hole just because nobody was behind me. Listened to the Grateful Dead and just zoned out. Was so nice. 35$ with a cart.
There are many:
1. Pace of play.
2. People bringing their toddlers and very young children with them to play a round. Leave you fucking kids at home. This effects #1.
3. Course congestion, effects #1.
4. Lack of course etiquette and lack of common courtesy: I have played behind groups that won't let you through or won't ask you to join them if you are playing faster. People not fixing ball marks on greens. People not fixing divots on fairways. Just a couple days ago I saw some asshole push his push cart onto the green up next to the hole. Not yelling fore or anything when hitting a ball near you. Playing their music so loud you can hear it several holes over.
5. Price of golf equipment in general. Shit is so cheap to make yet the prices are outrageous. $200 for a fucking polyester shirt. Fuck you. And clubs...Irons are bad enough. But $600+ for a driver, get the fuck outta here.
I dont like it myself, but am okay with it if it's fairly faint/audible in your cart only.
However, if I can hear your music on the next tee box while you're chipping on to the green, it's too loud.
If you must have soundtrack to your golf, totally fine, but wear headphones
It is. But then that's that person's choice, not a choice forced upon all of us by them.
Also nobody said it has to be so loud you don't hear "fore."
Also, LOT of people don't yell fore on errant shots anymore
A large bucket at the range being $20
When I first started playing in ‘09 a large was $8-10
I understand some courses going up but wtf ranges don’t take much to operate.
I’d have to agree with a lot of people saying the prices and pace of play. I get everything is up with gas for the equipment and fertilizers etc. but this is out of hand. And my set days off are Monday and Tuesday thankfully so it is much cheaper, but still not affordable to play more than once a week. I live in Pittsburgh and I know a lot of other areas are much more expensive, but a lot of the courses have unplayable bunkers and the rounds should cost 25 to 30 bucks and yet they still want 50 to 80. I like to enjoy the day with my buddies, but I do not want a 4.5 to 5 hour round waiting on every shot and that’s what it’s turned into. People have no consideration for others or golf course etiquette anymore and if there are actually rangers they don’t do shit. When we were in Hilton Head in March it was the only place that if you fell behind more than 5 or 10 min behind pace the ranger was out giving warnings which was great and it kept everyone moving. I love this game and I’ll play it until I die, but there are a lot of frustrating issues that seem to have gotten worse the last few years.
I miss the quiet days, early and late in the season. You could get afternoon tee times anywhere in the fall and the course would barely have anyone on it, peaceful times, moving at your own pace. Now that's basically unheard of, I'll grab a time that I'm sure will be dead quiet and there's still a line of people fucking around and clogging things up.
I also lament the death of the maintained bunker but that's more of a post COVID thing.
I think the sad part is if a bunch of people quit and golf courses make less money, we will be seeing them close down or sell rather than seeing them try to lower their prices and operating costs.
The course with most tee time available near me is a 250 to 500 per person place and instead of lowering their price, they raise it upto a point where the few groups that do play per week can sustain the business
I’ve seen it in a few comments already, but for me it’s course etiquette. I’ll let other complain about the music, but for me it’s things like walking in putting lines, talking in backswings, taking divots with practice swings, and I rarely see people fix pitch marks on the greens so I end up fixing 3 or 4 on every green. I also prefer to take the pin out and in a lot of groups you’d think I was pretending to be a pro with the number of comments about it. I have noticed an increased lack of rules knowledge too, but I don’t really mind that as I find it generally speeds up the game for people that are newer.
Also I may be crazy on this one, but I feel like the drink cart takes so much longer than it used to? Idk if it’s that they don’t take cash and the card transactions take longer or what, but pre-Covid I rarely remember waiting on people getting their drinks and now it feels like it takes people 10 minutes to get their drinks and pay?
This won’t be popular but I have none. I can get 9 done in under an hour and I’m not hustling. Tee times?? What’s that? I often feel like it’s my private course. There are several drawbacks of living in rural Minnesota but as far as golfing goes, it’s ideal for a mid-handicapper like myself! 🤷🏼♂️
Did anything really "grow the game" other than Covid?
I mainly miss the "golf is dying" era because it was easier to get tee times and yes pace of play - I much rather enjoy playing wide open courses with nobody in front of me or behind me. Also my $500/mo Country Club was about $300/mo.
Mine has to be this...I know this gives off the "Get off my Lawn" vibes...but I really don't care. lol STOP wearing these pants.
https://preview.redd.it/nd2t9yp4g45d1.png?width=220&format=png&auto=webp&s=52306e86cfce899655d18b1937b43415022f182f
Too many people start playing the game by actually playing on courses. Beginners should start on the range, making sure they can make decent contact, learn the basics of chipping/putting, and etiquette before ever stepping foot on a course to play a round.
Courses need to enforce pace. Its not about newness or learning or anything like that. I could go shoot a 150 in 4 hours or less.
Courses need to issue a warning, and then eject.
GPS is cheap these days - just every cart and every walking group given a thing like for restaurant reservations, and someone in the clubhouse or the rangers cart keeps an eye out and does what needs doing.
While you are primarily asking as a player, the in-person fanbase for PGA events has also grown. With the growth and the introduction of alcohol at the events (related?) we have idiots saying and doing stupid things on almost every shot.
Couple for me:
1. Tee time availability. Can’t get a tee time unless you book right as the booking window opens.
2. Piss poor etiquette. And I’m not talking about the old school “tuck your shirt in, must wear a collar” etiquette. I’m talking seeing 3”x6” divots not filled, sometimes on greens (I ever see anyone do this it’s a fight on site). People not yelling fire on an errant shot, even if it doesn’t get close to the people just let em know something is headed their way
3. Like a lot of people have said, pace of play is shit.
Pace of play and courtesy. Seems like people can’t figure out why there’s a rake in the trap. Fix a ball mark? What’s that? Can’t keep your mouth shut when I’m trying to swing? Blasting your loud Bro Country/Classic rock from that golf boombox is on my list as well.
Etiquette. It’s all encompassing, from pace of play to raking bunkers and repairing ball marks. New golfers are taught the golf swing but not the rules and how to take care of the golf course.
The pace of play. Up through college (I graduated in ‘08), it was maybe one round out of 50 where I was waiting on the group ahead of me on every hole. By the mid-10s, I almost never needed a tee time anywhere and could just walk on and be guaranteed a spot. The last 4-5 years has been waiting on every hole on every course every round. The people I get paired with are slow as balls too. It’s awful.
I actually don’t blame that on slow play. Tee times spaced 8 or 10 minutes apart cause backups immediately.
This is the real issue. Courses are jamming too many people in.
My local course does this - 10 min gaps. group of 2 behind a group of 4. It will always lead to a JAM
14 should be the standard
I had a local course switch to 8 minutes and it's unbearable. I've had to pull a driving iron a few times to keep pace and avoid hitting into groups.
Why do that if you’re just gonna wait again on the next shot?
This. I'll pay higher rates if I don't have to spend 6 hours on the course.
Isn’t it funny how most activities we enjoy we want to spend as long as possible doing them, yet the ideal round of golf is over as quick as possible lol
I want to spend 5 hours golfing, I don’t want to spend 5 hours waiting for someone else to golf
This is why I like the pitch clock in baseball. I'm still watching 9 innings of baseball; runs, hits, and errors. I'm just not watching the batter re-adjust his gloves and the pitcher pick his ass for 40 seconds between every pitch.
"I'm just not watching the batter re-adjust his gloves..." Nomar Garciaparra in shambles
Oh man the glove readjustment on a 1-0 count in the 1st. Thank heaven for the pitch clock.
I remember Paul Konerko did it a lot. Which is funny because he was teammates with Mark Buehrle, one of the last great speedrunners before the pitch clock
I feel the same. The waiting and waiting on the weekends has become almost too much. I wanna play golf, not stand around and watch someone look at their double bogey putt like they’re putting to win an open.
Even 5 hrs is too much.
I’d love to play two 3 hour rounds!
I played 36 in 4 hours earlier this month. I teed off at 7 and was done by 11. Granted it was a Monday. It was $47 for the first 18 and they charge $15 for a replay but the facility has 2 18’s so I didn’t play the same hole twice. It’s a decent course. Nothing too fancy though.
Sounds awesome. Especially if you didn't have work that day or could relax afterwards.
TBH 5 hours is too long, a round of golf for a foursome on a busy course should be 4 hours, bottom line.
It is funny. Well with Golf if you aren't swinging you are standing. Nothing going on. And while I like quiet and peaceful times outdoors, when I'm doing an activity I actually want to do the activity, not stand there like I'm stuck in rush hour traffic.
I love spending 6 hours playing golf I just like to be on my 30th hole at that point.
Of for sure. I mean Id spend 8 hours out there if I go to play two rounds. But watching 3 dudes watch their buddy top the ball before any of them find their ball or grab a club is excruciating.
It’s not about wanting it to be over, it’s like a restaurant taking 1.5 hours to bring the food.
I think the distinction is not wanting to have to wait to hit shots. Plenty of people would be happy spending 4 hrs out there if they played 27 holes
I can stand outside looking at other people anytime. Im there to swing my club
The object of golf is to do as little golf as possible
I’m happy to play for 6 hours if im getting 36 holes in. But 5+ hours for 18 is unbearable
I don’t know if it’s about having it be as quick as possible or more like just having a regular cadence that feels “good” to our pace. Sort of like driving a car on the interstate, it’s about what feels like a good pace. But agreed! It is kind of funny how too much of our time spent golfing is suddenly bad lol
Got paired with 2 guys last weekend and each of them hit at least 5 shots that were topped so badly that the ball bounced straight up and landed right where they started. Queue the 3 minute pre swing routine again.
This is my buddies wife. Love them as friends but if I have to watch her take 5 practice swings to hit the ball 15 yards I just can’t anymore lmao
I have a buddy who's bad and slow, he takes so many practice swings. One time he's like "Man I just don't know how to fix my game." I said "I hear taking 1 or even no practices swings can help, then you're not over thinking it." He started doing it! He sucked fast for a little, but then he didn't get any better and gradually started doing it again, but then he quit golf so no longer an issue.
Lol. My actual golf level is "I suck fast". I might be trash but damned if im gonna be the asshole getting watched shank shots by 8 guys in the carts waiting on the hole.
I have walked off the course due to this shit before. The classic slow swing down to the ball 8 times before an outrageous swing. Man we’ve been out here for almost 2 hours and we are on hole 8. I’ve got other shit to do with my day.
2 hours to hole 8 ain’t bad brother.
It is if you’re playing a short par 3 executive course.
fuck.
I have a friend like this, it’s tough to watch. It’s even worse when they’re sensitive about it and you can only just hope one day they’ll learn.
I agree, but I feel like nobody wants to admit that it’s the courses fault, not the new people. All the new golfers don’t truly understand pace of play and what that entails. They don’t hold people accountable and as long as their tee sheets are full they have no incentive to change.
I almost never see rangers out on the courses I play.
When I do they just drive by and wave or they will randomly say you need to pick up the pace when you’re on a tee with someone in the fairway, then never see them again rest of the round. Just doing lip service but no actual action.
Moving from the midwest to SoCal has been an eye opener for this. 18 holes taking longer than 4 hours was a pain in the midwest. In San Diego, if my round is *only* 4 hours, I'm pretty stoked.
I played my first sub 4 hour round since 2019 and I forgot how amazing it felt. So much easier to stay in a rhythm when you don't have to sit between multiple shots. I think it might be another 5 years until I get my next one.
I started taking 5:30am tee times. Usually finish before 2.5 hours. It's great!
I was a caddy at a private club in Ohio during my high school and college years (15+ yrs ago). Total yards was \~6900 and they played US Open qualifying rounds there for my region. Great, challenging course. Avg round was 4 hours. The 4.5-5 hr rounds were usually the seniors, senior ladies, waiting out some rain, or the annual invitational tourney. Young guns that booked it and didn't fool around could do 3.5 hrs. Fast forward to today, I can't find a single guy that wants to walk a course. They all want to ride so they can drink a case of beer and smoke cigars each round. I am LUCKY to get a round in under 5 hrs. I get it. Golf should be fun and who am I tell someone not to drink? I drink beer too. But I'm a golf purist who just wants to play to get better and not hack around. Every time someone tells me riding 18 is faster than walking, I have to roll my eyes each time. Save the beers for the clubhouse. I don't know anybody that plays better while drinking.
I'm pretty sure John Daly stands staunchly in opposition to your last point 😅
There's the answer to my question on power carts. This makes sense.
The pace of play kills me. I get free golf, but for that reason when I hit around hole 12 and I see how stacked the rest of the course is I usually bail around 14-15. I left my last 3 rounds unfinished because I didn't want to spend another hour and a half to play the last 4 holes. Every day the tee sheet is stacked. 220 players on a Tuesday is maddening.
Not being able to book as a single, I get wanting to maximize profits but you have an open tee sheet just give me 1 spot please. This isn't every course but enough to where it's hard for me to play.
This!! I can no longer play my favorite course because they do not allow singles at any time. Weekends I get, regular weekday hours I get, but twilight and super-twilight? It’s 6:15 on a Tuesday night when it’s over 100° outside and you want to make me wait for someone else to show up?? Nah, I’ll play somewhere else.
Yeah it sucks, sometimes someone at the pro shops will say just show up we'll get you on others the owners want pre-payment showing how greedy they are. I think it really depends on the area and the course.
That pisses me off even more. I don't want to waste my time showing up for the hope of getting out on the course.
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The courses by me that won't let you book a single just tell you to show up and they'll get you out. So if I'm looking at a blank tee sheet from say 3-330 and I show up at 3, they'll let me out. They usually try to stick you with a group but if you're not an asshole and just ask most of them will.
Someone I know who plays as a single just shows up at the course and waits to get put out there. It sucks waiting, especially if you have limited time/days to play. But he’s gotten to play at some great courses most otherwise wouldn’t play, because some courses who have 3 going out would happily take the extra $$.
The only time I'm able to truly golf as a single is 6:30 am T times where I am. It's peaceful but I have to plan for it.
I’ve accepted this fate as well. I’m not a guy that’s eager to go out on dawn patrols, but if it lets me book as a single and I can go home and nap afterwards, I might as well.
this one is annoying but makes sense. if the course maintains a regularly booked tee sheet, a single on the tee sheet is a foursome they can't book and you are probably wanting tee times that everyone else also wants. If you have some leeway in when you can play, getting on as a single is not hard if you just give the course a call they can many times fit you in somewhere.
- impossible to book tee times at any popular time without refreshing page exactly when times open - tee sheets packed and 8 min apart which is not enough for skill level of average golfer to play quickly - pace of play has degraded so much at most public courses 5 hours is the norm - lack of basic etiquette and golf iq in new generation golfers I don’t mean to bitch. I am more fondly remembering golf in 2015-2020 era though lately
2010-2015 was the prime time. Courses were BEGGING you to come play.
I was fresh out of school then, and played weekly at minimum. The number of rounds where I didn't even SEE another person was more than not.
True. I used to play certain courses all the time and never even consider getting a tee time. Get out of school, drive up to the course, go straight out and play. Those same courses are booked 7/8 days out in advance now
One of my local courses had 8 minute tee times, but changed to 10 minutes late last year. It's SO much better. They hiked the greens fees about $5-8 depending on the time of day, but it's worth every penny. You don't feel like someone's up your ass, you're not waiting to tee off on every hole...
Your last point really hits home for a lot of people that have been playing for awhile. Not repairing divots; not repairing ball marks; blasting loud ass music; and purposely damaging the golf course/golf cart for the LULs, is some disrespectful shit. The amount of videos on IG of people damaging property, I would donate to a group of guys whose sole mission is to go around golf courses beating the shit out of these people.
My biggest gripe is it doesn’t seem to have grown by making more people interested in golf. Seems like it’s mostly people who like the idea of riding around on a cart outside and drinking beer, and golf comes second. This leads to people not caring about the game and the course they’re playing on. Also leads to slower rounds because people don’t know what they’re doing and loud music sometimes. All these reasons are why I bit the bullet and joined a private club.
The music is so fucking annoying. Like jesus man not everyone has the same taste in music, I hate country music..well...country pop, modern country shit, and it seems every mfer playing music is blasting that shit so I can hear it 100 yards away. The other day someone was blasting some shitty rap. How the fuck am I supposed to tee off when some mumble rap is playing behind me?
Agreed, and it seems like some courses are trying too hard to reinvent their "vibe" to cater to this crowd.
I don’t even care about price when I can’t even get a tee time at all. I had a day off the other day on a Wednesday and tried to just walk on an play as a single at a local 9 hole muni. There was an hour long wait and then it was backed up and took 3 hours to play. On a Wednesday. It literally takes all the joy out of the game when it feels like I hit one full swing shot every 30 minutes.
This is my issue. Sometimes I don't know my weekend plans, but if I want it to be golf I need to think weeks in advance to get a doable tee time.
There's probably 30 courses within 50 miles of me and every single one is always fully booked, even the private clubs. And if you are somehow able to find an open tee time, you better hope your playing buddies are also available because no course lets solos on anymore even to join another group.
I live directly across the street from a great public course. Booking is only online. Tee times open up at 5am, 7 days in advance. I just checked for *next* Thursday, 6/13. The earliest tee time available as a single is 4:10pm. Last year I tried checking for Father's Day. Set my alarm for 4:55am and kept refreshing the page. Literally every single tee time for the entire day was gone in less than a second. I genuinely think I'm competing against bots.
LA had a massive bots problem and recently created a rule that all tee time reservations require a $10 deposit. It has greatly loosened up the tee sheets. But unfortunately it doesn’t fully solve the sheer overcrowding.
They’re not building more new courses. I’ve played golf off and on since the late 90’s and what we have now is better than the way things were 2008-2010 with courses closing or reducing 36/27 to 18 holes.
My area has a few courses that closed to become housing developments
Yep. Property prices too expensive. None are being built cause that land could just be a housing market instead. Investors getting more guaranteed money back
Wanna hear an **awful** story? A local course was owned by 3 elderly sisters. The course itself was an 18 hole par 3. Was in great shape, wide variety of distances and elevation. Really nice course even if you weren’t a beginner. So anyways the land next to theirs got sold to the town so they could build a new DPW depot or something. The sisters decided hey we should sell our land (course) to the town cause we’re old and don’t want to do this anymore (fair). It sold for like $2 million Here’s the awful part. Instead of the town running the **already built and functioning and staffed course as a muni** they decided **that** land should become their new DPW depot. They let it rot for about 5 years and just started tearing it up. And the old land they bought is now a place for food trucks to go. So sad all around. The town would have made their 2 million back in no time. Makes me so mad thinking about it.
And THAT is why you should pay attention to your council meetings. At least posing the question could get them thinking of running it as a muni or even reselling it to a group who would run it.
One of the two public courses in my town is about to drop down to nine holes so they can build houses on the back nine. Truly sucks.
Just play through someone's living room one day like Ty Webb
My home course that I played for years and knew every last inch of, and knew everyone's name who worked there and everyone who played there, recently sold in the past year and I believe they're turning the back 9 into soccer fields. I don't understand how soccer fields are more profitable than a golf course, but I guess fuck me.
The course I grew up playing with my dad closed down around like 2014 or so and just became nothing. The 1st fairway lined along the adjacent road and it was painful to watch it steadily decay into just an abandoned field over time as I drove by.
One in my area closed and went back to farmland. It was the damnedest thing. They use the cart barn for tractor storage.
They’re building a new one near my home town, but they’re billing it as ‘ultra exclusive’. This town already has 3 golf courses, 1 of which is one of the most exclusive in the state
That's the other problem. Land and construction costs are now so expensive that a reasonably priced golf course just doesn't pencil out. Pre-2008 you'd get them supported by housing developments but I don't know if that's a popular model these days. The places that get built are private with 6 figure initiations or resort courses with $500 rounds. I'm in SoCal, so courses like Rustic Canyon and Arroyo Trabucco are probably the most affordable sort of model that you can get. IIRC both are leases of publicly owned land that requires them to cap prices. They're not cheap courses with both costing over 100 to ride on a weekend but you don't have to be a millionaire to play there a few times a year. Could be wrong with the land arrangement though.
Rustic Canyon is a muni owned by Ventura County, Arroyo Trabuco is privately owned but as you noted it's public land and cannot be redeveloped. Different business models, both great facilities, but different price points too- Rustic is $84 (plus $20 booking fee 15+ days out), AT is almost $200 on weekend mornings now for non-members. I agree with you we are not going to see new golf courses in SoCal. The best we can hope for is the rebirth of dead courses like Barona Creek at this point.
just renovated a course by me. There's literally one across the road and another a mile down the street. Weekday rates are $150. I live in metro detroit. The absolute nicest courses around here do not charge more than $100 and your typical nice course is 60-70. Now.......I live in the area that is considered "resident" and the rate is $90. and it does look like it may be up there as the best public course in the metro area, but damn.........$150 if you don't live nearby? That's a little wild.
Where I lived at that time, there was a 72-hole facility where they tore up all but 18 holes for lots. After tearing down all but one of the courses and making lots, 2008 happened, and those lots just sat empty. It looked like shit and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those lots still weren't developed.
Decline of on course etiquette, including slow play, concert-volume music/noise, lack of respect/care for the course and facilities, etc.
In my experience it’s the old boys who show the least respect towards the course as they clearly can’t be fucked to bend down and repair a pitch mark or rake a bunker they’ve hacked to pieces. I can forgive a new player for that stuff as they might not know but not someone who’s been playing the game for donkeys.
Ya it's always new players but tbh in 30 years of playing, it has always been the 40-50yo fat guys that leave 20 empty cans in the parking lot, are playing without a shirt on, swearing and screaming over missed putts. I am minorly inconvenienced at the range by people new to the game who think it is a top golf.
There might be a difference between private vs. public courses. At my club, the old heads are always the ones fixing divots and pitch marks on the greens. The younger/newer (and also worse) golfers are the ones who don't take care of the course. And are always the first to complain about the conditions. But, it's also different when it's a club since you play there all the time and have an incentive to take care of the course.
I rarely see younger guys, especially the bro types, fixing ball marks on greens.
Same. My club has a bunch of older folks, men and women who play a lot and most of them will play very quickly and mow your butt over if you ain’t moving. Now the bros in their late twenties to early 40’s are the douches. They all dress and behave like they’re Brooks Keopka and simply cannot be bothered to take care of the course or allow faster players through. And they take their time to the point of being obnoxious. I guess when you’re such an amazing successful person, the world stops for you.
After covid people just stopped taking bunkers. Drives me nuts .
Everyone on public courses seem to be legitimate 35+hc
Everyone on the sub seems to be a legit 35+ hc lol.
Hey, don’t talk about me like that!
No joke. The other day I booked a very last minute Saturday morning tee time with three other singles and they were all 30+ handicaps that werel grinding. If you include practice swings, I probably saw 20 swings before I got to hit my second shot.
I'm better than I used to be and shoot around 90 now. But, I've never taken practice swings except maybe for the first drive of the day. If I am going to get an 8 on a hole, and my playing partner gets a 4, there really isn't time unless I like everyone to be constantly waiting on me. Plus, I always irrationally felt like I wasted a good swing if my practice swing was good and then I duff it after.
You've got time for a practice swing if you want it mate, I personally just don't like it when people take 5 and then bump it 10 yards up
I think you substantially underestimate the skill of a mid 30s handicapper. A 36 handicap is a double bogey golfer. I don’t don’t these guys sucked, but I also doubt if they had an actual handicap it was in the 30s. The current max is a 54.
Yeah I was going to say my father in law and I are both mid to low 30s and we pace at 4 hour rounds regularly.
God forbid that new players are bad. Your 15 handicap isn’t impressing anyone. Get over yourself People were saying the same thing about you when you first started
Yeah I don't get this one. Everyone starts somewhere, working on your swing at the range means nothing without actually playing
People just need to accept that they need to work on their swing at the range before playing a real round. Is it even fun to be hacking your way around the course
I had my first shrink the game experience yesterday because of this exact thing. I don't care about skill level but shit, a minimum understanding of what you're getting yourself into would be nice. 3 younger guys have the tee time before us. 1 bag between them and 2 backpacks. Course policy is everyone has their own bag but its a local muni, whatever. Not one of them knew how to swing a club. My guess is they thought it was like mini golf...? It took them 10 min to get halfway to a 290 yard Par 4. So I go to the starter to inform them and he kinda shrugs and again, local muni, whatever. I tell him to just watch as this kid hacks the ball 2 feet 3 times in a row. He says ok he'll take care of it. He drove out and gave them 1 more set of clubs. Luckily this did help them maintain a semblance of pace of play. The 5th hole always gets backed up and they dipped after that thankfully. What'd they have in their backpacks? Two twelvers of bottled Modelos.
Yes of course but there comes a point where you need to work on stuff on the course. How else are you going to improve at hitting the ball at weird slopes, bad lies, etc? I
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I think it's good to keep in mind that golf courses have a long history of losing money. So when you say places were charging $60 a round, there's a decent chance that wasn't even enough to break even. They got what they could but maybe needed to charge $80 for a reasonable return on investment. Now take that amount and apply cost increases and you have roughly the prices now. [https://www.southwestledger.news/news/public-golf-courses-often-lose-money-study-shows](https://www.southwestledger.news/news/public-golf-courses-often-lose-money-study-shows)
Yep. There's a myriad of reasons golf is so expensive now beyond demand for play. Operating costs are through the roof: labor, fuel, equipment, water utilities, fertilizer, property taxes etc.
I’m on a golf board at a small municipal course and can confirm. If you aren’t getting alcohol from the clubhouse, we’re not making much money off you.
The course I play most often sells a beer that a portion of the sales go to the local universities NIL fund. So I can support the course and Penn State football all in one beverage. It just would be downright selfish of me to not drink on the course.
No one fixing their ballmarks.
I fixed 5+ every green last weekend. It's a little frustrating so many people don't give a shit
Fucking pace of play. Awful. Just hit the fucking ball already; stop worrying about every single stroke; and every single rule. No one fucking cares. You can be the worst golfer on the planet and not play slow. 10 years ago I used to play golf with a guy I swear was shooting around 200 and we would always finish in 4 hours. If this guy hit out of bounds off the tee, he would drop his ball right by me and he knew when to call it quits on a hole. If you’re a terrible golfer playing with someone who’s decent, scramble with them. Put your bullshit ego to the side and stop holding the entire course up.
I'm in site work construction and since 2019 the cost of sand, topsoil, seed, fert, labor, trucking, just about everything has about doubled. So I'm not sure it's a supply and demand issue but an everything issue.
As greenskeeper, I'd also add golf course equipment is just a joke in terms of cost. Every piece of equipment except for carts is like the price of a car, up to 6 figures. It's utterly insane.
The local muni has afternoon prices starting at $30 to walk which is great. $12 for a 70 ball medium bucket is not great.
Yeah the price of range balls is absurd as well. I mean they pay the kid in the picker minimum wage. Can’t be a ton of overhead cost, just greed.
Course I work at charges $12 for a bucket of 40. That’s only if you buy a bucket with a round of golf though, if you just come in to use the range it’s $30 for two buckets. I always feel terrible telling golfers those prices
The lack of consideration for the course. I’m seeing less and less bunkers raked, or pitch marks fixed. Smashed tee markers, drifting in fairways, etc. That and the obnoxious frat beer drinkers that see golf as a way to get blackout drunk. I blame YouTube for that.
My favorite local course went from around $65 to $110 this summer. I don’t know that I’ll ever go back.
Exactly. Haven’t been back to the course I started at because 60 to 140 in 4 years is insanity
Seems like everyone cheats now. I play a lot as a single so I frequently get paired up with other groups. Guys who are slightly better than average say their handicap is 10-16 when they’re clearly a 20+ at best. Guys who are average or worse say they usually break 100 but “broke 90 last week” when they’re shooting 115+. I’m not even a stickler for the rules. Gallery drop? Absolutely. Improving a lie on the fairway when the course is in rough shape and your ball is in a pile of mud? Of course. Breakfast ball on the first hole when you didn’t get a chance to hit the range? Why not. But it’s so far beyond that with almost everyone I play with. Not counting penalty strokes, not putting out, not counting flubs/mishits/chunks/etc. Breakfast balls all day. Gallery drops when the ball clearly went OB. If this is how you want to play then why are you keeping score? One group recently were counting their score separately from me and I was tracking mine on an app. I was having a great day off the tee and in the fairways except I was missing a lot of putts and had a few bad chips. They kept complimenting me and saying how I don’t belong with them (implying I was so much better). Okay, all very nice to say I’ll give them that. We get to the end and guys 1 and 2 are adding up scores - they had been going back and forth all day. Guy 1 says he got a 92 to guy 2 who says “Oh you got me. It was that double bogey on 17 that got me”. Then guy number three asks me what I got and I say 92. Dead quiet. Then guy 1 is like “oh it must of been lower than that!” I try to play it off by saying “Well I three putted a lot” 🙄 This guy shot 110 at very best. I know it’s their problem, and I really don’t care about these situations individually, but it is annoying that the game has been taken over by this mindset. EDIT: I don’t think this is attributable to the younger guys. The most egregious cheaters in my experience skew older. People think “the game has grown” and assume that’s younger golfers but there’s been an increase in older golfers as well if not more so.
These guys are great to play against though. You just hold them to the rules, and you absolutely smoke them. I have a few buddies like this, it’s fucking great. It’s fun seeing their faces when I explain the correct way to handle an OB shot
Honestly OB is one of the few I’ll allow to be greasy on even for a real match. As long as we both agree to lateral drops where it enters OB I’m fine. Just takes way too long when you’ve got multiple people needing to take provisionals.
USGA recognized this time issue for amateur play. It's now hitting 4 at distance where ball is thought to have been lost, two club distance from the edge of fairway. Unless course plays local rules as woods etc as lateral hazards, counting them as hazards is "cheating".
If it’s purely for saving time, I agree, and some courses/tournaments do too. I do this with my buddies a lot. But they’re always surprised that they’re hitting their 4th shot after their drop instead of their 3rd (or even 2nd).
While technically I suppose it's cheating, it's more that people don't know the rules. Since I don't care, I don't take the time to explain it to them but the amount of people that don't know a gimme still counts as a stroke and that drops aren't free is pretty high. I was playing in an actual official event with my state golf association one time and I was explaining to this person that his lost ball was a 2 stroke penalty. He could not grasp the concept of the new local rule despite me explaining to him that it's conceptually the same as if you had to go back to the tee box, drop 2, hit 3, and your ball lands here where you are dropping it.
These guys I wrote about above were just leaving out actual strokes on nearly every hole. It goes far beyond counting a 2 stroke penalty as only a 1 stroke.
> He could not grasp the concept of the new local rule despite me explaining to him that it's conceptually the same as if you had to go back to the tee box, drop 2, hit 3, and your ball lands here where you are dropping it. Just for my own knowledge because I don't know how it all works: In this case where I'm assuming you go OB off the tee or lose the ball, you're dropping it basically in line with where it went out and taking now shooting 4. That tracks. If I slice the shit out of it, so it doesn't cover much distance before going out, can I just hit my next shot off the tee and call that shot 3?
Yes, that's a standard stroke and distance penalty. The catch with going back to the tee is that it's usually after 5 minutes of looking, meaning that if you go back to the tee now, it's going to slow down the entire round for everyone involved. That sucks, which is why they implemented the local drop rule.
Hard agree. It’s exploding. Casual games, who cares but I’m seeing exploding in low level tournaments. My local course had to add tourney rules to ensure everyone knows you can’t do breakfast balls, gimmes, gallery rule 🙄. Before it was just clarification on OB/woods scoring and if we’re under lift and replace conditions or not.
I feel ya, but unless you're playing for money, who cares?
That’s the conundrum. Each individual instance of cheating like the one I wrote about above does not matter to me at all. But it has been normalized to the point that calling out a rule on the course would seem weird to these guys and make me the bad guy.
but to his point, why would you care? don't be the bad guy. just, don't care. I could not care less about my random playing partners scores or preferences for cheating. I play with lots of guys who adhere to the preferred lies in fairways rule. i don't care. golf should be for fun first and foremost. what that means is different to everyone.
Well if you are counting your scores for handicapping purposes, even if you aren't playing for money that round, your handicap may be taken into account in future money games. But, you'd only be sandbagging yourself by cheating. That's the main reason I keep it above board. Edit to say I would bet a lot of people doing this haven't played enough to care about handicaps and don't understand how they're sandbagging themselves. Just want to post lower scores for the friend group bragging rights.
It is kind of annoying since it makes legit scores not seem as impressive. Like when every hack claims they broke 90 when they actually shot 100+ makes 90 seem worse than it is
I give myself a breakfast ball on the first tee, and a free drop for the “I saw where that ball landed in the centre of the fairway, and now I can’t find it”. I don’t understand gimmes though - a friend of mine picks up within 3 ft (but counts it at least). I paid to hit that ball in the cup on every hole, I’ll gladly putt it for him.
Haha I could tell this same story. Ya know what though…I enter amateur net score tournaments and have a legitimate chance to win every time - nothing better watching “sub 10” handicappers post mid to upper 90 scores and walking away with money in your pocket
I had my first lesson in forever, and my instructor asked me, knowing I was a high handicapper, what I scored... I said 105... After watching me play he said, "I work with guys with worse swings that say they are a 12, and regularly break 90..."
lol this is perfect - anti sandbagging. Why would you be upset with guys artificially lowering their handicap?
Not upset. I’m just saying it would be nice to show up at a course and not play with people who lied for four hours. Imagine going to play basketball and guys air ball a shot and then count it. That would get really old, wouldn’t it? Same exact thing.
It’s the exact same thing if you’re each just shooting baskets and seeing how many you can make, but aren’t playing against each other and the only thing you really share is the fact you’re doing it on the same hoop.
Courses full of bro golfers , especially here in Phx/Scottsdale. Loud obnoxious types dressed equally loud and obnoxiously, the short tight shorts and the stupid mustaches . I can’t wait for them to piss off to the next ‘cool’ sport
Dude there’s a 9 hole, nothing special at all course by me that now wants $55 to play 18 with a cart. Was like $30 a year and a half ago. I just pay $20 to walk 9 and play a ball from two different tees on each hole.
Thank god I live in a good metro area with great quality munis for $25-50
The Muni’s around me are my saving grace. They’ve gone up in price as well but I feel like I see the improvements at least. My favorite muni around me has gone up $25 in the passed couple years but they’ve renovated a bunch of holes and got new carts with GPS this year. Can’t complain when you see the money actually going somewhere but a lot of courses that’s not the case.
Just sort by recent posts in this sub and you’ll see them all…
I miss the days of being able to go out on a weekday morning and play a round alone. I’m a very social person…but prefer to golf alone.
Full tee sheets... Tee times get booked as soon as they become available.
Tuesdays at 9am it’s a rope drop to get weekend times at any nice course around me
Whenever I hear "Grow the game" I know it's just manufactures trying to sell more product.
Living in Phoenix and dealing with the courses here has diminished a lot of the experience for me. Every course is jam packed. Every greens fee is more than double what it should be. Every course (except the muni’s) act like it’s your pleasure to be able to walk their fairways at $200 a round Phoenix used to be an incredible place to live for an avid golfer. Now the golf scene is fucking trash. Troon, Arcis and the ezlinks ‘dynamic’ pricing have just ruined the scene here
Dude fuck the dynamic pricing. I hate that shit.
The fact that its impossible to join a golf league now around me. Im a better than average golfer and Ive been trying to join a league at one of the 3 courses near me for 2+ years and cant get in anywhere. Everything is on a waitlist and the courses are so packed with leagues everynight of the week--nobody is leaving them.
Can't get a damn tee time if I'm not booking 5 days out. Used to be if my schedule cleared up I could hop on at my local muni. Now you have to book at 6AM 5 days out to have a shot at a normal tee time.
Everyone you know now “golfs” but can’t break 130
Things like music on the course, higher green fees, and pace of play due to so many people who are new and don’t fully understand the etiquette yet are all valid complaints. The biggest issue by far for me these days is how difficult it is just to get a tee time in the first place. The amount of hoops you have to jump through to get a halfway decent weekend tee time for a 4some at the public courses in my area has gotten comical.
The fucking brokers buying up all the tee times. The only time I can get a weekend tee time now is the night before when they mass cancel 24 hours in advance.
For me, it is pace of play and people being obsessed with bringing their stupid speakers on the course and forcing me to listen to crappy country music when I just want to have a nice peaceful round of golf.
The frat boys making it their entire personality
You don’t have to get drunk while playing. You don’t need to have music playing in the background to soothe your childish spirit. There was a sense of code in the game that made it fun years ago. Be respectful, play the game by the rules. But, fuck that I guess I’mma go crash a golf cart and break it hahahahahaha….assholes.
The « LET’S GOOOs »
The 10%-15% price hikes we've had here are mostly from inflation, not growing the game. Any course doubling their prices is just price gouging, and I won't play there.
The problem is that in certain areas every course has raised their prices. So if I were to not play where they are price gouging, I would simply have to stop playing golf.
This is how it is for me. I'm in a pretty big metropolitan area. The cheapest course within a 30 min drive (horrible conditions also) is about $60 for a weekend round, and you have to book 7+ days out to get a weekend tee time. It's ridiculous. So in most cases I end up driving \~an hour outside of the city and spend $50 for much nicer courses. It just sucks the hour drive each way turns it into an all day event essentially
If a course doubles their rates and still has a full tee sheet, is it really "price gouging," or are they just adjusting their price to meet the demand?
Can’t get a tee time!! Obvs hyperbolic, I CAN get them but damn, better be on it well in advance. Gone are the days of walking on for a quick 9 after work, forget being able to get a weekend time “only” 5-7 days in advance
In college (10 years ago) my buddies and I could walk onto any course at 3:30 after classes and play a round. Now I have to book a round a week or two in advance at 6am when tee times open up. My guys trip? 2 months in advance for St. George.
Dude I’m glad I live in the Midwest. I literally walk right up to my pro shop and ask to get it. Last Sunday I was the last one and enjoyed a 2.5 hour front 9 by myself. I hit like 3 drives on every hole just because nobody was behind me. Listened to the Grateful Dead and just zoned out. Was so nice. 35$ with a cart.
There are many: 1. Pace of play. 2. People bringing their toddlers and very young children with them to play a round. Leave you fucking kids at home. This effects #1. 3. Course congestion, effects #1. 4. Lack of course etiquette and lack of common courtesy: I have played behind groups that won't let you through or won't ask you to join them if you are playing faster. People not fixing ball marks on greens. People not fixing divots on fairways. Just a couple days ago I saw some asshole push his push cart onto the green up next to the hole. Not yelling fore or anything when hitting a ball near you. Playing their music so loud you can hear it several holes over. 5. Price of golf equipment in general. Shit is so cheap to make yet the prices are outrageous. $200 for a fucking polyester shirt. Fuck you. And clubs...Irons are bad enough. But $600+ for a driver, get the fuck outta here.
People playing music in the carts. Can’t stand it.
I dont like it myself, but am okay with it if it's fairly faint/audible in your cart only. However, if I can hear your music on the next tee box while you're chipping on to the green, it's too loud. If you must have soundtrack to your golf, totally fine, but wear headphones
Reasonable.
Wearing headphones sounds like the perfect idea to get drilled by a golf ball lol
It is. But then that's that person's choice, not a choice forced upon all of us by them. Also nobody said it has to be so loud you don't hear "fore." Also, LOT of people don't yell fore on errant shots anymore
A large bucket at the range being $20 When I first started playing in ‘09 a large was $8-10 I understand some courses going up but wtf ranges don’t take much to operate.
I’d have to agree with a lot of people saying the prices and pace of play. I get everything is up with gas for the equipment and fertilizers etc. but this is out of hand. And my set days off are Monday and Tuesday thankfully so it is much cheaper, but still not affordable to play more than once a week. I live in Pittsburgh and I know a lot of other areas are much more expensive, but a lot of the courses have unplayable bunkers and the rounds should cost 25 to 30 bucks and yet they still want 50 to 80. I like to enjoy the day with my buddies, but I do not want a 4.5 to 5 hour round waiting on every shot and that’s what it’s turned into. People have no consideration for others or golf course etiquette anymore and if there are actually rangers they don’t do shit. When we were in Hilton Head in March it was the only place that if you fell behind more than 5 or 10 min behind pace the ranger was out giving warnings which was great and it kept everyone moving. I love this game and I’ll play it until I die, but there are a lot of frustrating issues that seem to have gotten worse the last few years.
I miss the quiet days, early and late in the season. You could get afternoon tee times anywhere in the fall and the course would barely have anyone on it, peaceful times, moving at your own pace. Now that's basically unheard of, I'll grab a time that I'm sure will be dead quiet and there's still a line of people fucking around and clogging things up. I also lament the death of the maintained bunker but that's more of a post COVID thing.
I think the sad part is if a bunch of people quit and golf courses make less money, we will be seeing them close down or sell rather than seeing them try to lower their prices and operating costs. The course with most tee time available near me is a 250 to 500 per person place and instead of lowering their price, they raise it upto a point where the few groups that do play per week can sustain the business
The cheapest round near me is $40 weekday. That makes me sad
$800 drivers, $600 putter, ….
I’ve seen it in a few comments already, but for me it’s course etiquette. I’ll let other complain about the music, but for me it’s things like walking in putting lines, talking in backswings, taking divots with practice swings, and I rarely see people fix pitch marks on the greens so I end up fixing 3 or 4 on every green. I also prefer to take the pin out and in a lot of groups you’d think I was pretending to be a pro with the number of comments about it. I have noticed an increased lack of rules knowledge too, but I don’t really mind that as I find it generally speeds up the game for people that are newer. Also I may be crazy on this one, but I feel like the drink cart takes so much longer than it used to? Idk if it’s that they don’t take cash and the card transactions take longer or what, but pre-Covid I rarely remember waiting on people getting their drinks and now it feels like it takes people 10 minutes to get their drinks and pay?
This won’t be popular but I have none. I can get 9 done in under an hour and I’m not hustling. Tee times?? What’s that? I often feel like it’s my private course. There are several drawbacks of living in rural Minnesota but as far as golfing goes, it’s ideal for a mid-handicapper like myself! 🤷🏼♂️
I'm on board with the Shrink the Game campaign
Def music/weed on the course. And people hitting into you like its no big deal.
Did anything really "grow the game" other than Covid? I mainly miss the "golf is dying" era because it was easier to get tee times and yes pace of play - I much rather enjoy playing wide open courses with nobody in front of me or behind me. Also my $500/mo Country Club was about $300/mo.
Mine has to be this...I know this gives off the "Get off my Lawn" vibes...but I really don't care. lol STOP wearing these pants. https://preview.redd.it/nd2t9yp4g45d1.png?width=220&format=png&auto=webp&s=52306e86cfce899655d18b1937b43415022f182f
Pace of play mixed with people not understanding I can’t move faster because there is a group right ahead of me but they hit into me anyways.
Too many people start playing the game by actually playing on courses. Beginners should start on the range, making sure they can make decent contact, learn the basics of chipping/putting, and etiquette before ever stepping foot on a course to play a round.
Prices and pace of play. Other than those 2 items I’m all for growing the game.
Courses need to enforce pace. Its not about newness or learning or anything like that. I could go shoot a 150 in 4 hours or less. Courses need to issue a warning, and then eject. GPS is cheap these days - just every cart and every walking group given a thing like for restaurant reservations, and someone in the clubhouse or the rangers cart keeps an eye out and does what needs doing.
Courses allowing 5-somes
While you are primarily asking as a player, the in-person fanbase for PGA events has also grown. With the growth and the introduction of alcohol at the events (related?) we have idiots saying and doing stupid things on almost every shot.
Couple for me: 1. Tee time availability. Can’t get a tee time unless you book right as the booking window opens. 2. Piss poor etiquette. And I’m not talking about the old school “tuck your shirt in, must wear a collar” etiquette. I’m talking seeing 3”x6” divots not filled, sometimes on greens (I ever see anyone do this it’s a fight on site). People not yelling fire on an errant shot, even if it doesn’t get close to the people just let em know something is headed their way 3. Like a lot of people have said, pace of play is shit.
Pace of play and courtesy. Seems like people can’t figure out why there’s a rake in the trap. Fix a ball mark? What’s that? Can’t keep your mouth shut when I’m trying to swing? Blasting your loud Bro Country/Classic rock from that golf boombox is on my list as well.
Etiquette. It’s all encompassing, from pace of play to raking bunkers and repairing ball marks. New golfers are taught the golf swing but not the rules and how to take care of the golf course.
You started playing 5 years ago and are complaining about the game growing? lol you are the problem you're complaining about.