A senior moment

I am now at the age when I can join the seniors for their weekly golf event. Or, to be precise, of the state of mind that allows me to enjoy participating with them in their weekly 9-hole play at our local municipal course.

Technically, I reached that age a few years ago, but it took me a while to get used to it. Besides, this time around I had official reasons to join them. That’s because as newly appointed chair of my town’s municipal golf committee, I have a built-in political or administrative interest in how things are run at our local Pete Dye-designed Wintonbury Hills Golf Course in Bloomfield, Connecticut. We’re now in our 20th year of operation. It is run quite admirably on behalf of the town by a division of Troon Golf called Indigo. They get an annual fee and a percentage of gross revenue above a contracted threshold as a bonus.

My unpaid job as chair is simply to serve as a liaison between the town and the management firm while ensuring the concerns of pass holders and daily-fee players are addressed. For two decades now, things have gone very well. We register 28,000 to 31,000 rounds annually, largely because the course is in magnificent shape, and we maintain a healthy pace of play of 4 hours, 15 minutes. General manager and Master PGA Professional Ciaran Carr has a keen business sense and a pleasant demeanor that serves everyone well. Our superintendent, Dennis Petruzzelli, CGCS, manages with a minimal crew to present conditions comparable to the area’s best private clubs at a budget no more than 60 percent of what they spend.

Our golf committee, which meets once a month on an advisory basis, recently was tasked with dealing with an issue of the senior golf group that has privileges every Tuesday morning. Turns out, they’ve been too successful, with average participation by men and women up by over 25 percent this year. We have 40 to 50 golfers signing in for the 9-hole events. The problem is, as seniors who run in ages from 65 to 98 and include both veteran players and complete novices, they were taking up a lot of time playing their half-rounds. In some cases, rounds took three hours.

That’s a problem, because while they would be teeing off on one nine, fee-paying golfers, many of them from out-of-state and paying premium rates of $80 to $90 due to congestion pricing, were running into them when they made the turn, causing backups. It even led to some of those golfers staying away on Tuesday mornings, which cost us a lot of revenue.

After hearing about the issue, I decided to investigate by joining the seniors for a 9-hole event. And what I quickly discovered was that the backups and slowdowns were due to a few golfers having trouble tracking their golf ball, losing perspective when they advanced in their cart and not having “marked” where their shot wound up. They were also slowed down by adhering to “playing in turn” rather than “ready golf,” as well as taking too much time on the greens, especially over those testy come-backers — and the putt after that.

I brought this up to the committee, and after a few minutes of deliberation, we decided to institute a few basic adjustments. First, don’t waste time looking for your golf ball. If you can’t find it, drop another and play from there without penalty. We also suggested that golfers pick up on the green after their third putt. We also tried designating a “captain” in each foursome who would effectively function as a forecaddie and help expedite ball searching and pace of play. And, of course, play “ready golf.”

I know, the suggestion to just drop another ball without penalty flies in the face of the official rules of golf. So what? Our job was to help folks enjoy their golf, not test whether they were playing by scout’s honor in dutifully obeying a legalistic rule book. With apologies and respect to the USGA, I stick by the decision. Besides, it worked. The first week under the new guidelines we cut average time by 20 to 30 minutes, thus no backup at the crossover. We’ll see if the rabbity pace holds up.

The point, as I wrote in a memo to the senior golfer who introduced the changes, was “to have fun out there, make friends, share memories and keep everyone fit so that we can all break 100 — years.”