Most of you will know that since the beginning of the year I have been sending out a weekly e-newsletter. For those of you that haven't been receiving them you can submit your e-mail address to the Pro Shop or go online to philwomack.co.uk and subscribe via the dialogue box. I hope everyone else has enjoyed reading them.   The intention behind the newsletter is to discuss Pro Shop business, be informative and be a forum for discussion. With this in mind if there are any topics that you wish me to cover then please let me know.

Now that we've hit early nights, pressure for time to play especially at weekends becomes more difficult. In the Summer Bernie Field leads the way at approximately 6am and members are still happily teeing off up to 1 o'clock when we open up the course to green fees. By the time we reach December 21st Bernie can't tee off until 8am and even 12pm is too late for a 4 hour round.

Obviously, we have the same number of golfers trying to fit into a time span that's 3 hours shorter than in the Summer. This requires the understanding that you may not get the tee time you want and MORE importantly everyone carries a bigger duty to get round the course as quickly as possible to enable those playing behind to finish before it gets dark.

* What is slow play and who is guilty?   * Slow Play is unnecessary time taken which is wasted.  * It is everyone waiting whilst the first player off the tee marks his card and puts on a glove (taking 20 seconds) – which would be 6 minutes per round.  * It is everyone waiting to tee off whilst a player fidgets around with his bag before going to the tee (taking 30 seconds) – which would be 10 minutes per round.

Just these 2 items (and there are many more) have added 16 minutes to one round of golf.

Those playing behind then probably have to wait as well. If they find out that they're not going to be let through then they “ease off” and start wasting time as well. You can see the snowball that begins to develop. 
So who is guilty? Well all of us have certain traits that could be considered to be slow play, but some of us have a lot!

I would love feedback from all of you with any other causes of little bits of wasted time that annoy you.
Have fun playing this winter.