What gets your blood boiling on a round of golf? Is it inner frustration, or are there external factors which can turn a pleasurable round of golf from being a stress relieving joy, into a slow descent into maddening fury? Listed below are the ten most annoying things you will come across on a golf course today.

1. Slow play

The bane of many a round of golf is when you and your partners, not to mention the 30 people behind you wait around at each hole for the four ball in front to finish. There’s the “after you Henry” groups of people who seem so intent on playing to The Rules, that they stand around applauding each and every shot, checking their yardage books, chatting about the weather, changing clubs three times before topping the shot 15 yards down the fairway to begin the process once again.

Even worse, you are guaranteed that they are the type of golfers who are not going to let you through. After all, they have paid their money and have every right to play the game as they like. Well, in my book, so do the other few hundred poor souls backed up behind you on the course, who have equal rights but who are also being denied the chance to do so because you are being petty and selfish. If people are backing up behind you, then let them play through, it means they are quicker than you are and that IS in the R&A rules. Just don’t bother checking it until you reach the 18^th, otherwise people will be left stranded on the course all night.

2. Poor quality greens

You’ve hit a good tee shot, your approach has actually found the putting surface and you walk proudly onto the green to take on a birdie or even an eagle putt. You take care to line it up, judge the break and the pace. You strike the ball, the ball is perfectly online, until six inches from the hole, a pitch mark or hole made by some inconsiderate dork with a club, bumps your ball two inches left. Gahhh!

Worst still are the greens on some courses where the greenkeepers take a “laissez faire” attitude towards its management, believing that golfers prefer to put through grass so unkempt and uncared for that you are never sure if there is a snake, lion or elephant hiding next to the flag. For pity’s sake, take care of them for us, there’s no point playing the game if when you reach the green, it is like trying to put on cobblestones.

3. ‘Unfair’ fairways

A controversial one for traditionalists and lovers of undulating links fairways, but having personally played a few links courses, I am not a fan. I see absolutely no justifiable reason to punish an absolutely dead centre golf shot, by having bumps and undulations that can send a golf ball not only into the rough, but often into the next county. A good golf shot should be rewarded, most amateur golfers have enough ability themselves to send the ball hurtling into the rough with great regularity without the course being designed to do it also.

Then there are the fairways on parkland courses that are not particularly fair, nor are you sure they are actually the way to the hole either. There are some unkempt courses in the UK, where the standard of fairway is akin to a second or even third cut of rough in the US. Is it asking too much to keep them relatively neatly trimmed?

4. Mobile phones

“Yeah!…Yeah…. I’ve told him £3,000 for the lot! HA HA HA! Thanks Mate! Nah I’m at golf!” and so the conversation continues for the next 20 minutes as your playing partner stands over his ball, somewhat embarrassed and well aware that there are now 12 people on the tee behind desperate to send a drive straight at his partners mobile phone. If you absolutely MUST take or make a call on the course, is it too much to ask to do it quickly and quietly? Set the phone onto silent or vibrate, and speak into it quietly so that your voice doesn’t send small animals scurrying from the trees in fear of an earthquake?

Alternatively, now here’s a thought… Switch it off, pop it in your bag and forget it for a few hours! Go on, try it! It’s liberating! It’s like a more acceptable form of golfing naturism. Go naked and leave your phone in the bag for 3 hours or so, it’s a fair bet that the world will not end without your valued input during that time.

Also, if you must absolutely have your phone at all times to do things, then why are you on a golf course in the first place? If you have to do work, then work is the best place to do it and you’ll annoy fewer people too (unless you are a politician or traffic warden).

5. Unrepaired pitch marks

I may have given some green keepers some grief earlier, but this is a fault entirely the making of selfish golfers. Is there anything more depressing than having hit a beautiful shot into what looks a verdant green, only to walk up and find out that between you and the hole lies a no-man’s land of pitch holes and pock marks that makes the green resemble the lunar surface?

It staggers me that some golfers do not have the 2 seconds spare time to repair their pitch marks after playing their shot into a green, especially when etiquette states to repair not only your own, but any others that you see.

Really ladies and gents, a pitch mark repairer costs a few pennies, you can even use a tee if needs be and repairing the hole makes it so much more agreeable for those behind you.

Images by Gorilla Golf Blog©

Be Sociable, Share!

•