Being Held Up On The Golf Course: Say Something Or Grin And Bear It?

Fergus Bisset says: say something

Problems arise when humans don’t communicate effectively. Throughout history, poor communication has led to some awful conflicts. Letting tension and bitterness brew never ends well, especially when it comes to slow play.

It's better to say something and reach an agreeable solution, even if it seems challenging. It’s called diplomacy. If you’re being held up on the course, everyone will benefit if you’re willing to speak up and sort it.

If you’re keeping up with the group in front and waiting on every shot and they're oblivious to your plight, it’s generally because they are oblivious to your plight.

They’re worried about their games, not yours. But people are reasonable. If you take the right approach and suggest you might be playing faster than them, they will, invariably, apologise and stand aside for a few minutes.

Everyone wants to enjoy their day and the slower group will enjoy theirs more if they feel they’ve done the altruistic thing and let a faster group pass. There are no rules to say it should happen, but the guidance is that slower groups should let those moving more quickly through (it's a different discussion if the course ahead is full, though).

Would you rather spend an extra hour silently stewing and building up resentment to those in front or have a polite chat, realise they’re reasonable people, reach a solution that suits you all and get round in good time?

Proper human interaction requires conversation, and staying silent when a difficult situation arises only leads to animosity. If you’re brave enough to speak up calmly and thoughtfully, you will find a resolution. If you’re being held up on the course, say something and fix the issue amicably.

Jeremy Ellwood says: grin and bear it

Listen, we’ve all been there, frustrated by the pace of play, whether it’s the group directly in front of us or someone further up the chain. And our level of frustration can depend on all sorts of things from how much time we have to spare, to the weather, which side of bed we got out of that morning and, if we’re brutally honest, sometimes how well or otherwise we’re playing that day.

And yes, I have resorted to both courses of action over the years, but I have to say that confronting people usually merely adds fuel to the flames and makes matters worse.

Most of us will have seen full-blown golf course fist fights on social media, and while sometimes mildly amusing to observe from the safety of your own home, anything that runs the risk of such a situation arising for real makes me want to run to the safety of the ‘grin and bear it’ side.

Okay, there isn’t usually much grinning going on but the ‘bearing it’ can take all sorts of forms. On my travels, I’ve resorted to playing a few holes again if course geography and traffic allow, jumping a few holes ahead, sitting on a bench to soak up the views and perhaps pour myself a coffee from the flask I sometimes carry, or occasionally even undertaking a golf ball search, especially if stocks are running worryingly low.

While in the past I might have been up for a bit of a verbal fight, I now feel that it’s just not worth it and certainly have no desire for things to potentially escalate beyond that.

I’m a writer, not a fighter, as Gilbert O’Sullivan once famously sang in the 1970s… look him up if you’re too young for that name to mean anything to you.