Here is how to tell slow play in a game of golf

The Rotary Club will be hosting golfers at the Karen Country Club in support Enkereyian Primary School girl’s dormitory construction.

I will join golfers who will be supporting this worthy cause and I expect, just as is the case with many charity events, the draw will not be followed to the letter.

The aim of these charity events is to attract many golfers to help raise funds. Rotarians from the Nairobi East Club will have reached out to their networks with the hope of raising enough money for the girls at Enkereyian Primary School and try as they may, they may not be able to get all confirmations in time for the draw to be published.

Whereas there is everything wrong with having a major tournament like the Karen Challenge without a draw, there is nothing wrong with having the Rotary Annual Charity Golf Day without one.

The Rules of Golf require that the committee in charge of a tournament to establish the times of starting and in stroke play, arrange the groups in which competitors must play.

The Rule however does not prohibit competitors in a stroke play competition to determine their own groupings and starting times in the absence of such a draw.

Whereas this may work when the field is not big, like is the case in most charity events, it can be an absolute disaster when the same is done during one of the popular corporate golf days.

Such an oversight just leads to golfers who don’t finish their rounds or have to wait for the group ahead to move before making their next shots.

The competition committees then employ the services of marshals who are required to tell the players to move faster.

If the draw is oversubscribed, the marshals may as well herd cats! If say the marshals tell a group to pick up their pace when they have been waiting in all their previous shots, it only adds to their frustration. There’s also one thing that keeps troubling me; how can marshals tell when a group is slow?

Easy you say? You probably think that when a group has been left by one clear hole by the group that they are following then they must be slow?

This is a simplistic way to look at this problem and there are times when being left by a clear hole or two is not an indication of slow play.

Now, before you accuse me of being a charlatan and condemn this column to being fit for wrapping nyama, allow me to illustrate; at the Kenya Open Pre-qualifying round that was played at Vet Lab Sports Club, the first pair of golfers to tee off were Richard Ainley from Kenya and Scott Gregory from England.

The pair finished their round 30 minutes ahead of the second group of Pedro Figueiredo from Portugal and Manuel Trappel from Austria who were 15 minutes ahead of their schedule.

We had prepared timing sheets for the tournament and knew exactly which hole each group needed to be at any time. So when Figueiredo and Trappel were not right behind Ainley and Gregory, we did not accuse them of being slow.

From our timing sheets, we knew that Ainley and Gregory were moving like greased lightning round the course. It would have been utterly wrong to penalise Figueiredo and Trappel based on the pace that was set by Ainley and Gregory.

NO PROPER DRAWS

The other problem we have is that when golfers are not properly drawn, the most likely groupings will be based on friends who are likely to play off similar handicaps.

It is not uncommon to find a group of low handicappers going before a group of high handicappers. If the low handicappers have an average of five handicap, then they are likely to play birdies on an easy par five, which will make a total of 16 strokes for a team of four players.

The high handicappers will be lucky to play bogeys each; a total of 24 strokes. That, and the fact that they will probably take two minutes to search for one ball just makes it impossible for the high handicappers to keep up with the group in front.

A marshal would not be correct to tell the high handicappers that they are slow if they can’t keep up. There is absolutely no way that the high handicappers will possibly keep up with the pace of the low handicappers. If a marshal approached them and told them that they were slow, I would not consider them rude if they asked; “based on what?”

I don’t expect us to have similar troubles at the Rotary Annual Golf at Karen Country Club on Friday. We shall enjoy the superb course while raising funds for a worthy cause without any marshals in sight.