There Are Too Many People On Golf Courses These Days And It's Only Going To End With More Lunatics Like This
It's one of the most magical weeks of the year. The world turns their attention to Augusta National for the 88th edition of The Masters Tournament. The azaleas are in bloom, spring is officially here, and major golf tournament season is underway.
While that might be incredible news for all the golf enjoyers of the world, it is downright horrific news for public tracks all across the country. Because public golf is still dealing with the ramifications of the pandemic, and it has to be nearing a code red sometime soon here. As more and more people started to get into golf during the pandemic, it seemed like a great boost for the sport at first. I'm sure public courses everywhere experienced a massive boom and started making money hand over foot. You would see tee sheets completely filled for the entire day with times gapped a spacious 15 minutes apart.
But then it kept going. More guys started to bring more friends and getting them hooked on the game. So you start to squeeze more groups onto the course by spacing out the tee times maybe 11 minutes apart. Maybe even 10 minutes apart if you wanted to make a couple hundred extra bucks on the day. Now you've got 84 dudes on the course at the same time with a group waiting at every single tee box because you have a bunch of guys playing in tshirts and sneakers who take 23 minutes to play a single hole.
What's the result?
It's almost impossible to decipher what exactly is going on here on account of belligerence. But if I had to take a wild guess, buddy in the backwards hat has probably been playing at a snail's pace all morning long. Having an entire conversation between shots. Taking 7 minutes to look for a ball in the woods only to magically "find" it right in the first cut of the rough. Dude has probably taken up 3 hours of the day just to play the front 9. So the group behind him probably finally had enough and decided to push the issue a little.
But our friend in the backwards hat and tshirt didn't take too kindly to that. He's the type of guy who cards an 81 even though he actually shot a 106. So he thinks he's better than he actually is. He thinks that if he just holed a few more putts or cleaned up a few of his wedges, that he'd be shooting par. So he can't believe the group behind him would have the audacity to walk up on him to tell him to cut the Brian Harman act with 17 waggles before each swing.
Backwards hat. Tshirt. Sneakers. This isn't a man who showed up to the golf course that afternoon to conduct himself in gentlemanly fashion. He's 7 beers in on the day and just at that perfect level where he's drunk enough to be an asshole but sturdy enough to stay on his 2 feet. Bad combo for everybody else around him.
These are the people that are filling up the tee sheets as golf continues to get more popular and accessible. People like this are why it's impossible to play a full 18 at a public course in the summer in anything less than 5 hours. Something needs to change. Do we create courses with just 13 holes for the weekend warrior type of player? Do we create a new set of rules for guys like there where you get a free drop per hole? Or do you make golf exclusive again? Either way, something needs to happen to save the world from 6 hour rounds and maniacs like this jamming everything up.
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