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Reckless driving can flip golf into a very good experience, spoiled.
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In golf, we study to take the nice with the unhealthy. However typically the unhealthy turns into greater than we are able to bear. Not the wretched shots. The execrable conduct.
In a recent survey, we requested our viewers to share reminiscences of probably the most egregious on-course conduct they’ve ever witnessed. Hundreds responded.
As a result of the replies are too quite a few to reprint in full, we’ve sorted them into classes and supplied examples that signify the worst of the worst. Right here they’re, our 14 inductees into the Golf Etiquette Corridor of Disgrace.
CHECK OUT THE FULL RESULTS OF OUR GOLF-ETIQUETTE SURVEY HERE
1. Poor course upkeep
Failing to repair ball marks and fill divots is unhealthy sufficient. However next-level negligence additionally appears widespread. One respondent described “a dude” who climbed “out of the steepest facet of a bunker, leaving cavernous gouges within the facet of the bunker and by no means even glanced on the rake.” One other informed of a participant “tomahawking a putter right into a inexperienced in frustration, imbedding it a number of inches down.” After which there was the man who, after lacking a putt, “swung at his ball to knock it away however missed and took a six-inch divot on the inexperienced, proper subsequent to the opening. It was unrepairable.”
2. Reckless driving
Anybody who calls golf a very good stroll spoiled hasn’t paid consideration to what people do in buggies. Flipping them, for example. 4-wheeling them by means of bunkers. Additionally: Doing donuts within the fairways. Bashing into different carts. Driving roughshod over greens. And no, one reader wrote, “I wasn’t with Trump.”
3. Fisticuffs
Joe Louis was a golfer. So is Sugar Ray Leonard. Oscar de la Hoya is huge on the sport. Loads of different gamers appear to suppose they’re pugilists, primarily based on the variety of tales we heard of fights breaking out (“proper there on the inexperienced,” one reader wrote), usually within the aftermath of 1 group hitting into one other.
4. Music on the course
Music is okay, most respondents stated. However not when it’s performed at Metallica concert-level decibels. And never when it’s pumped from a number of sources that aren’t taking part in the identical tune. “We had three audio system in a single foursome,” one respondent wrote, “all set to completely different hip-hop music loudly.”
5. Costume-code violations
The foundations round apparel are getting looser on a regular basis. Hoodies are in. Shorts are allowed the place they was forbidden. However a few of our respondents are nonetheless making an attempt to carry the road. One reported being miffed on the sight of somebody taking part in in a V-neck undershirt. A minimum of they weren’t taking part in within the uncooked. “Bare swings on a golf journey,” one respondent wrote earlier than acknowledging that the offending golfer was, in reality, “me.”
6. Taking, um, aid
And never simply behind bushes or deep within the woods. In our survey, anecdotes abounded of golfers letting fly on tee packing containers, cart paths, fairways and greens. One reader reported seeing a fellow participant going — tips on how to put this? — quantity two instantly within the cup. One other informed this story: “Membership championship. Second gap. A member of our threesome has a raging hangover and IBS. In horrible discomfort, he grabs his golf towel and bolts for the deep fescue. Disgusting.”
7. Dishonest
Foot wedges. Hand wedges. Un-granted gimmes. The record goes on. “My opponent hit 5 provisional balls off of a tee and didn’t declare what ball was what quantity and the way it was marked,” one respondent wrote. “He then stated he discovered his first ball.” And: “A participant in certainly one of my buddy journeys would hit tee photographs method into the woods however one way or the other it was at all times within the clear. He was by no means invited again to subsequent journeys.” Doubtful recoveries have been a recurring theme. “A participant immediately ‘discovering’ their ball within the tough and it’s sitting up so effectively it may be seen from 20 yards away aft actual members of the foursome tramped all by means of the realm the place the ball now sits and never one noticed the ball.”
Golf-etiquette survey results: Sounding off on slow play, cheating, dress codes
8. Public endangerment
Dangerous photographs occur. However no level including harm to insult. “No fore name,” one respondent wrote. “Hit me with a drive from about 100 yards away and broke a bone in my foot.”
9. Drunk and disorderly
Nothing unsuitable with a cocktail or two. However “getting so wasted you fall over getting out of the cart is past the realm of acceptable,” one reader wrote. So is the conduct one other respondent reported of a boozy golfer “driving a cart in circles on the inexperienced.”
10. Gradual play
If the definition of madness is doing the identical factor again and again and anticipating completely different outcomes, no surprise sluggish play drives so many individuals batty. Most irritating of all, one respondent wrote, was the golfer with the behavior of “taking 20 observe swing and hitting it two toes after which doing it once more.”
11. Extreme telephone use
Discreet texting? Effective. However many readers informed of fellow golfers yacking like merchants on the stock-market flooring. “Standing on the tee speaking on the telephone for a number of minutes,” one wrote. “When known as on it, the individual swung with the telephone tucked beneath their chin. Hit about 5 toes.”
12. Gum chewing
Tiger Woods chewed gum at Augusta National en path to profitable the 2019 Masters. Different Tour professionals have embraced the observe. In case you’re going to repeat them, although, please, hold it quiet. “Performed Pinehurst No. 2 with my dad years in the past and we have been paired with one other older gent,” one respondent wrote. “His spouse was allowed to stroll the course with us and was consistently snapping a chunk of gum in her mouth the entire spherical.” And a inexperienced jacket wasn’t even at stake.
13. Mood tantrums
Snapped putters. Splintered drivers. Damaged axels on carts. To listen to our respondents inform it, you’d swear that the sport is wildly standard amongst toddlers. To wit: “An individual I used to be taking part in with was taking part in terrible. On concerning the fifth gap he took his total bag and threw it right into a pond and stomped off the course. Pondering he had come to his senses once I noticed him coming again down the golf green, I needed to snicker when he walked into he pond, picked up his bag, retrieved his automobile keys after which drop his bag again within the water.”
That’s the upside of unhealthy etiquette: Every now and then, it provides comedian aid.
