Pace of Play: It's Your Problem.

It's a beautiful Saturday at the beginning of October. You can almost feel another great golf season coming to a close.

And you know what? You're excited about it.

Not just because a little break is coming once that white stuff starts flying... okay, maybe that's part of it.

But because you've spent another season dealing with stress, making countless decisions, putting out fires and constantly being on the go. And now all that hard work is about to pay off.

The financials are looking good, the season has been a success and you can finally start to see the results of everything you've worked so hard for.

Of course, you're going to give your staff all the credit. After all, you couldn't have done it without them.

But deep down, you know something else. And so do the people above you.

There's a reason this operation is successful. It has the right leader in place.

THEN... you get the call.

The first group out today just made the turn in TWO AND A HALF HOURS.

RECORD SCRATCH.

Wait... WHAT?!

What are the chances of that? It's October! These golfers are supposed to be out here because they understand the game, know what they're doing and are relatively decent at it!

Well, apparently not today.

Here we are, another busy Saturday and the lead group has decided to set the record for the slowest weekend round of the year.

What went wrong? Why can't people just figure out how to play faster?

WHO SHOULD I FIRE?!

This certainly isn't MY fault.

Wellllll... actually, it kind of is.

The Problem Isn't Always the Golfers

I've been dealing with pace of play issues for over 25 years. And for the longest time, it was the same old routine.

A group falls behind. Someone complains. The ranger tries to figure out what's happening. Maybe they talk to the group, maybe they don't. Maybe the group speeds up, maybe they don't.

Sound familiar?

About five years ago, I finally got tired of not having an official plan in place. So I created my first beta version of a pace of play system.

Was it perfect? Absolutely not.

But it was a start.

Year after year, that system has been edited, adjusted and revamped. Some changes came from staff suggestions, others came from situations we encountered on the course and plenty came from me realizing there was simply a better way to do things.

Today, we have a plan that everyone follows.

The expectations are the same. The procedures are the same. And most importantly, our staff has the resources they need to effectively monitor and manage pace of play without getting into screaming matches with golfers.

Because let's be honest, nobody wants to spend their Saturday arguing with someone about why their foursome is 20 minutes behind.

Is our system perfect?

Nope.

There are still a few kinks. Most of them involve user error or those occasional groups that simply cannot seem to get themselves back on pace.

But even in those situations, we have procedures and solutions in place.

And that's the difference.

Your Staff Needs More Than Instructions to "Keep Play Moving"

Here's something I've learned over the years.

You can trust your staff all you want. You can have the greatest starters and rangers in the world. But if you're expecting them to calculate pace of play times, make judgment calls, and figure out how to handle every situation on their own, mistakes are going to happen.

And when those mistakes happen, who gets the phone call?

YOU.

Your staff needs a plan that's simple, written out, easy to understand and consistent.

Not something they have to figure out on the fly.

They need to know when a group is behind, what action needs to be taken, what they're allowed to say and what happens if the group doesn't respond.

And they need to know that management is going to support them when they're following the plan.

You can't expect consistency from your staff if you haven't given them a consistent system to follow.

Oh, and About That Two and a Half Hour Front Nine...

That wasn't a hypothetical situation.

It happened last weekend.

The first group out took two and a half hours to play the front nine. On a busy Saturday, that's a pretty good recipe for turning the entire tee sheet into a disaster.

So what happened?

There was a breakdown in our system. The ranger missed the group while monitoring the course and by the time the issue was identified, the damage had already started.

But here's where having a plan paid off.

Once the situation was identified, our staff followed the procedures already in place.

The group was informed of their pace, was required to make the turn without stopping per our policy and was given clear expectations for getting back on schedule.

By the time they reached the 12th tee, they were actually ahead of pace.

Think about that.

A group that took two and a half hours to play nine holes was back on schedule just a few holes later.

No screaming matches. No guessing what to do. No making up rules as we went along.

Just a plan that was already in place and ready to be used.

The Takeaway

I could go on and on about pace of play. Trust me, after 25 years of dealing with it, I've got plenty to say. And there will definitely be more blogs about it in the future.

But here's what I want you to take away from this one.

If you don't have a simple, consistent, written pace of play plan in place, you need one.

Not just for your golfers, but for your staff and quite frankly for your own sanity.

Will it eliminate every slow group? Of course not.

Will your staff still make mistakes? Absolutely.

But when something goes wrong, you'll have a system to fall back on instead of scrambling to figure out what to do next.

And remember that beautiful October Saturday when everything was going perfectly?

Well, it still can be.

You just need to make sure your operation is prepared for the moments when it isn't.

-The FGM