Don't Give in to the Five Hour Round

By Shane Sharp,
Contributing Writer

Myrtle Beach, S.C. - This just in: as a society, we are creeping towards the acceptability of the five-hour round of golf. The number one complaint of golfers across the nation is slowly being transformed from the exception, to the norm, to the rule.

I spent the weekend in Myrtle Beach playing thirty-six holes of golf in nine hours and forty-five minutes. This is not unusual for this time of year, as the courses are packed with golfers from Michigan and Ohio trying desperately to get in those last few holes before flying back to their winter golf wastelands.

But much to my chagrin, both courses I played had come to accept the inevitability that a typical round of golf is creeping towards five hours. Case in point, course number one had posted that the ideal time to get around the track was in 4:45 minutes.

In other words, in the time it would take me to drive from Myrtle Beach to Asheville, North Carolina, or digest two college basketball games, or watch The Matrix 2.5 times, I should be completing a round of golf

How efficient. Not long ago, Major League baseball games began to approach three hours in duration - whether it was due to dilution of pitching, lengthy television advertisements, juiced balls, or the time it took to pull Albert Bell off some unsuspecting fan in the stands.

Whatever the cause, it was deemed by the league's powers that be that the three hour baseball game was unacceptable, and a smattering of small rules were placed in effect that successfully reeled America's pastime back towards the two hour and thirty minute region.

The point being that the acceptance of the inevitability of the five-hour round is nothing more than a cop-out. Just because it is a trend doesn't make it right. It's like the federal government legalizing heroin or cocaine just because its use is so prevalent that its very legalization would eliminate the problem. It's the great Red Herring in the argument, and it's keeping you from enjoying your birdie.

The second course I played had those nifty Global Positioning System units equipped on the golf carts that tell you the yardage to the pin from your location, the contouring of the green, the time you are ahead or behind in your round, and when you should feel the need to use the bathroom.

This level of insight is key, if you have a Bill Gates like personality. But even the marvels of science do not free a player from the dreaded creep towards the five-hour round. The unit in my cart explained that the expected playing time was 4:40 minutes.

As I approached the eighteenth hole, the unit let me know (with a smirk no doubt), that I was fifteen minutes behind this target time. Translation: hi, welcome to your five-hour round. R2D2 would never present Luke Skywalker with this kind of grave news.

So the next time you play a round of golf, and you are encouraged to meet a nearly five-hour deadline, rebel! Play ready golf, don't line up putts like a tour pro, play through snail-like foursomes before they know what hit them, call the ranger on your cell phone and tell them the pace of play is unacceptable.

Do whatever it takes, because time spent waiting on the tee box is time you will never get back in life, and think of all the movies and college hoops games you are missing.