In its effort to address the problem of slow play at Thurgoona the Committee is asking all members to please adhere to the following guidelines to assist in keeping to a pace of 4 hours and 10 minutes. Note that these guidelines apply to stroke play (including stableford, par etc) and match play formats.
1. Be ready to tee off at your designated tee time. This means that you should arrive at the tee as the group in front of you is hitting off so that you can be ready to hit when you are called to the tee (not start making your way to the tee when you are called).
2. Shorter hitters should hit off first regardless of “the honour”. There is no point waiting for the longer hitters to hit off if they have the honour. Just following this simple procedure can save 15 minutes per round.
3. Be realistic about how far you hit the ball (simply over-estimating how far you hit the ball can easily add 10 minutes to your round).
4. Your position in the field is immediately following the group in front, not just in front of the group behind. Should you be falling behind the group in front please play Ready Golf until you catch up. Ready Golf includes (a) playing when you are ready to do so regardless of who is away (provided it is safe to do so), (b) when finished putting out, a couple of players should progress immediately to the next tee to hit off, (c) continuous putting to save time marking, lifting and replacing the ball, (d) picking up in formats where you are “out of the hole”, (e) moving quickly between shots and (f) being ready to play when it’s your turn.
5. Should you not be able to keep up to the groups in front and your are being pressed from behind, let the group behind you play through. Do so in a manner that does not slow the rest of the field down (ie you can tee off the hole and allow the group behind to also tee off, walk up the hole together so that your group is in a position to stay within a shot of the group which is playing through). Please make an effort to ensure that allowing a group to play through does not have a “domino effect” on the rest of the field.
6. Simple habits such as placing your bag or cart on the side of the green nearest the next tee, watching closely to your playing partner’s shots to assist if they hit an errant shot, playing a provisional ball if you’re unsure that you will find your original etc can all add up to keep round times as low as possible.
In an effort to provide awareness to golfers, the Committee will be analysing the Pace Reports for competition rounds and highlighting groups who don’t finish within 10 minutes of the group in front of them and take longer than 4 hours and 10 minutes (this is after deducting a 10 minute grace period to scan your card after putting out on your last hole). Once satisfied that these limits are reasonable, the Committee will consider making these reports public. The membership will be notified of the timeline of this initiative. Players are asked for their cooperation by scanning their cards prior to putting their clubs in their car, loading up their carts etc. This will give us the most reasonable picture of our pace of play.
Thank you to all members for following these guidelines and reducing the impact of slow play at Thurgoona.