Why Golf Sucks, rambling, inspired by other thread

[diddle]

Some background: played in college, lowest hdcp +1.0 (1 under par)

Maybe I am biased because I hit the ball far (bragging, yes, but this affects my opinion).

Scale the ball back at least 10% across the board. Honestly, however ego driven this may sound, I am sick of hitting drives and rarely seeing where they land. I would much rather hit the ball 270 and be able to see it, with everyone else hitting it relatively shorter as well. It will be hard to get the 220 yard hitter to give up 20 yards without a fight to the death.

Hitting a fairway at 310 is more damned luck than anything. See the pros stats, 50% is good accuracy for that distance.

A shorter golf ball would make it so that courses of 6500 yards aren't obsolete to the pros. 6500 yards is a more pleasant walk than 7500.

Make courses that are walkable. Stop building the tees 200 yards from the previous green.

I get to play a lot of the new courses that open up as a freebie, and to be blunt, most of them are agonizing. Golf should be fun and not a chore. Give me a course with holes running next to each other, with no houses in between.

Let the players find their ball if they miss the fairway. Don't have 6 inch rough and bushes and tumbleweeds and impassable thorn gardens off the fairway. This delays rounds as much as anything.

Don't have water on the left and OB on the right. Give the players a bail out area.

Slow the greens down. No reason to have everybody 3 and 4 putting. Fast greens add 30 mins to a round.

Do these things and maybe we could get the average round finished in under 4 hours. 3:30 would be awesome.

Public golf in the US is in terrible shape. I guess if people are spending $100+ for every round, then they want to be on the course for 5+ hours. I don't.

The course architects, developers, superintendents, and USGA are unintentionally conspiring to take all the fun away.

I rarely play 18 holes anymore. Now I just say [censored] it, go to the range, and blast some over the back fence for an hour.

[HDPM]

Yep, good post.


I am seriously thinking of starting the Retro Golf Asscociation. Rules: Woods are wood. All shafts are steel. Irons are forged with no cavity back. No long putters. 10 club limit. No carts. No laser rangefinders. No sandals with spikes on them. Finish in 3:30 or DQ.

I like walkable courses around 6500 like you say. Cart path laden overbuilt no fun courses are crap.

Agree that fast greens can also be a problem I tend to like fast greens, but they often come at too great a price in both maintenance and design.


You might find my club interesting. It started out as a 9 hole course a long time ago. The front nine is an old course with holes running next to each other. There are some walks between holes because they had to use the land, but nothing really unpleasant. The back nine starts with a dogleg left, OB and houses on the right, water and a ridiculous internal OB on the left. They had to make the area left of the hazard OB to keep the hole playing like a dogleg left. So it is really nice to wonder about rulings for 25 handicaps who get ensnared in that mess. The back nine continues with miles of cart paths that affect play too much and lots of houses. It is a stark contrast and sort of funny.

[slickpoppa]

I think you need to relax. Part of the reason that rounds of golf take so long is because there are a lot of crappy golfers out there. That's never going to change. But even crappy golfers should be able to finish a round in 4 hours. The real problem is that people either take themselves too seriously or are too dumb to plan out their shots before getting to the ball. Judging from the whininess of your post, I think you may fall into the former category. If you are really a +1 handicap (or were), most of the criticisms that you mention should rarely be an issue for you.

[ligastar]

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Slow the greens down. No reason to have everybody 3 and 4 putting. Fast greens add 30 mins to a round.

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Hmmmm. I putt better on faster greens. The majority of the group of golfers I play with would say the same thing.

[roundmound]

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Slow the greens down. No reason to have everybody 3 and 4 putting. Fast greens add 30 mins to a round.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmmm. I putt better on faster greens. The majority of the group of golfers I play with would say the same thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

You guys are opposite of just about every other golfer on earth then. Slower greens allow you to be more aggresive without having to worry about 3 putts.

[plaster8]

[ QUOTE ]
I am seriously thinking of starting the Retro Golf Asscociation. Rules: Woods are wood. All shafts are steel. Irons are forged with no cavity back. No long putters. 10 club limit. No carts. No laser rangefinders. No sandals with spikes on them. Finish in 3:30 or DQ.

[/ QUOTE ]

These are all fantastic, except for maybe the forged-club thing. I am not a great golfer (best round ever was 78 on a par-70), but I would abide by these rules, especially the "woods are wood" one. I've got a Ping 3-wood that I absolutely kill. And people always look at me funny when I pull the headcover off. But there's something infinitely more satisfying about hearing "thwack!" rather than "tink" when you tee off.

And I think wooden woods would go a long way toward solving the distance problem referenced in the OP.

[diddle]

[ QUOTE ]
I think you need to relax. Part of the reason that rounds of golf take so long is because there are a lot of crappy golfers out there. That's never going to change. But even crappy golfers should be able to finish a round in 4 hours. The real problem is that people either take themselves too seriously or are too dumb to plan out their shots before getting to the ball. Judging from the whininess of your post, I think you may fall into the former category. If you are really a +1 handicap (or were), most of the criticisms that you mention should rarely be an issue for you.

[/ QUOTE ]

not really sure why you are making it personal...

The issues in my post affect every golfer because if there is one slow group out there, the whole course slows down.

A golf course is a large shared space, and unlike most sports and activities, one careless group can EASILY [censored] up the day for others.


I do take myself seriously when I play, and I think more people should. By seriously, I mean that I play ready golf, and I am not obnoxious to the other people on the course. This is really all I ask out of other players. I don't care if you shoot 70 or 120.

In college, I asked to be moved out of pairings with certain players (low 70s shooters), simply because their pace of play was disgusting. I play for fun, not to watch some douche line up his putt from 4 sides.

I would rather play with 100 shooters who keep it moving.

All I am asking for is a round <4 hours, preferably <3:30.

[Roy Munson]

This post strikes a chord with me. Golf was much more enjoyable when courses were walkable and you could find your ball after all but the most errant of shots.

Cart path only and interstate travel between greens and the next tee are two factors that have slowed the game tremendously.

I would be more than happy to dial the distances back. It is ridiculous that as a middle aged man I can launch it way farther than I did as a teenager and young adult.

Most of all, I miss the sound and feel of persimmon on balata.

[Sluss]

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I play for fun, not to watch some douche line up his putt from 4 sides.


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God this drives me nuts. I love playing guys like that for money. When I walk up behind my ball take a look (without crouching) take two practice strokes then sink the putt. Then they line it up from four angles, plumb bob, take a dozen practice strokes and then miss it.

I also can't stand the guy who hits it 250 on a par five and still has 295 to go pulls out the 3 wood and waits for the green to clear. I feel like blasting it over his head and then going up to my ball and showing him how I'm going to lay up from 260.

Plus, the guy who lines up his shot takes three practice swings, then checks the GPS, then lines it up again and then takes another three practice strokes and pops it into the woods.

People just need to realize they are not pros. The twenty minutes of preperation before each shot are not necessary. It doesn't matter how far you can hit the ball. If you can't hit it in the fairway it's not going to help. There are rounds of golf where I might take my driver out once or twice, just because I'm not hitting it well. Golf is a game of adjustments. But, if your watching on TV it's just a game of overpowering the course, so that is the way most people play. Meh, I shouldn't complain though I make a lot of money thanks to these people. I just don't like that it takes me so long.

[aheravi]

A lot of the issues with slow play come from an unintended John Daly effect. John hit it big (no pun intended) and suddenly, fat slobs everywhere figured they can play golf too as long as they can hit it a mile.

Here's the fallacy, though: John is long, but at least he's accurate. AND he can walk 18 holes. Ask all these other butterbeans to walk 18 holes and they'll say, "Huh?" Even if you give them a caddy.

Trend toward longer clubs and longer balls is killing the game. But it's making the club/ball makers a ton of money. I'm 5'4", and with todays technology I can hit it 290. That's BS.