I Refuse To Stop At The Halfway House In Golf Competitions... And 2026 Data Proves I Might Be Right

A halfway house is often perceived to be one of the true luxuries on a golf course. The joy of stopping for a hot or cold drink and a snack is a real treat. As such, many of the most prestigious venues across the UK and overseas are renowned for their halfway houses. Some, like Surrey’s Top 100 gem Sunningdale Golf Club, have a halfway house that’s famous for fabulous sausage baps, others are known for their homemade cakes.

However, when it comes to making a pit-stop halfway round in a competition I think they are a total nuisance. Having a halfway house slows play down considerably and causes a loss of momentum if you are playing well. For this reason, I refuse to stop at a halfway house when I’m marking a competition card. Even a quick detour to collect a coffee can be enough to completely ruin the flow of your game, affecting your swing tempo, timing and your concentration.

As an elite county golfer, trying to shoot a low score, I’m 100% focused on my round. A tour professional would never dream of stopping for a sit down snack and a drink during a tournament round. They carry energy bars, fruit, water and hydration drinks in their bags. So why, as amateurs, do we think that taking a break is a good idea?

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My home club, Parkstone in Dorset, invested in building a wonderful new halfway house last year. It’s perfectly positioned so that you can access it after the seventh green, before or after hitting a tee shot at 13 and again after putting out on 15. It’s a fantastic addition but a speed of play killer! The only time I’ll use it is when I’m playing casual golf or during a fun competition like on Lady Captain’s Day when everyone in the field stops.

My attitude towards its interference in the flow of a round may be frowned upon by some club managers who want to encourage their members to use this ‘expensive-to-staff’ service, but I genuinely believe that stopping slows play down considerably and halts momentum, and the game is slow enough as it is!

And then there are our halfway house food choices. Golf is supposed to be an athletic sport, so why is it acceptable to eat a big greasy breakfast bap, a sausage roll or a slice of cake when you make a pitstop during a round of golf? We’d never dream of fuelling our body with such rubbish mid-way through a workout at the gym, yet some players stop for a bacon sarnie every single time they play.

I’ve also seen arguments ensue when one or two players in a group don’t want to stop (usually due to a shortage of time) and others do. It often means they end up having to let the group behind play through. All of this adds considerable time to their day and for working women, parents trying to rush to do the school run, and in other situations, many of us are already on the clock. We’re supposed to be trying to speed the game up - not slow it down!

Golfers often talk about the 'turn' as a reset moment. Walking from the 9th green to the 10th tee is a moment of genuine change in their round of golf - a brief pause to add up your front-9 score and reflect.

I was so convinced that making a halfway stop after the 9th hole harms your score on the next that I wanted to dig into the facts. With the help of the brilliant statistics and insights available from Shot Scope, we can see exactly how a halfway break impacts performance. The only caveat is that we don't know who actually stopped, but the results are still an eye-opener.

The metrics compared the average score over par on holes 8 and 9 (the end of the front nine) against holes 10 and 11 (the start of the back nine), broken down by handicap group. Perhaps most revealing was that hole 9 is the hardest of the four holes for almost everyone. Across all handicap groups, it consistently produces the highest average score over par.

But does the data support a genuine performance shift - for better or worse - at the start of the back nine?

Interestingly, the answer splits cleanly down skill level. Better players (scratch to 10 handicap) actually scored worse on holes 10 and 11, averaging fractionally more strokes over par on the start of the back nine than the end of the front. While these differences are tiny, they are incredibly consistent across all three groups of lower-handicap players.

However, for higher handicappers (15 to 30 handicap), the exact opposite was true. This group actually scored better at the start of the back nine, averaging fewer strokes over par on holes 10 and 11 compared to holes 8 and 9. While the effect is small on a per-hole basis, it is a consistent trend - every single handicap group from 15 to 30 shows a clear improvement after the turn.

The statistics make perfect sense. Stopping at the halfway house likely disrupts a low handicapper's concentration and breaks the flow of their round.

For a typical higher handicapper having a bad round and scoring poorly, stopping at a halfway house for a few minutes gives you the chance to regroup and perhaps approach the remaining holes with a fresh attitude and more positive mindset. It gives you the opportunity to take a few deep breaths and draw a line under a disastrous front nine.

We’ve all seen this happen during bad weather delays in televised tour championships when players get called off the course for safety because conditions become unplayable or dangerous. Players who were scoring badly get a chance to speak to their coach and regroup. They often come back out fighting, improve their score and make the cut.

Golf is a leisure sport. Most of us play at a recreational level for pleasure and there’s no doubt that a halfway house is a great addition to clubs as part of that service. I think a solution to slowing speed of play would be for the halfway house to have a system to take orders in advance of the stop, either via an app or an on-course order point at the start of hole 9.

This allows the server to prepare drinks and snacks for the upcoming group to simply grab and go. There’s no hanging about or time-wasting, so when it comes to slowing play and ruining the momentum of a round of golf they are not a scorecard killer.

So the moral is, if you take your golf seriously, choose to use a halfway hut wisely, as a grab and go stop or a leisurely luxury on a fun day out only.