F
MANY OF YOU WHO READ THIS MAGAZINE HAVE ACHIEVED GREAT THINGS IN THE GAME. YOU’VE PLAYED THE FINEST COURSES, OR ARE MEMBERS OF THE FINEST CLUBS, OR HAVE ROUNDS OF GOLF FILLED WITH CAREER MEMORIES, HEAVEN-SENT GOLF SHOTS AND PUTTS THAT TRACKED INTO THE CUP AS IF PRE-ORDAINED TO SEAL OFF LIFETIME- BEST ROUNDS. TO YOU, THE REST OF US SAY, WITH GREAT RESPECT AND FRIENDSHIP: AW, NUTS.
LAW
or the rest of us, golf is hard. Golf is filled with embar- rassments, topped balls, three-putts and those fancy club tournaments where we get invited as a guest, and wind up going BIP (‘Ball in Pocket’) for half the round.
BIP is never a good look. That’s why a website called
Hackgolf.org posed a ques-
tion that caught our eye: “What makes the entire, end-to- end golf experience less fun than it should be?” Man. Talk about an open-ended question. That ranks up
there with other massive queries to ponder, like “How did life begin?” and “Why doesn’t every golf course serve those burgers we get at Olympic Club?” I think we’re going to have to agree: If we want to make
golf more fun, this answer needs to skew young. After all, if golf is going to grow, survive and thrive, it won’t be by cottoning to the Judge Smails demographic. If some of this stuff sounds blasphemous, let me remind you that we now live in a world with kids who think typing out the words “see” and “you” and “later” on a text is too time-consuming. What, your kid doesn’t tell you he or she will C U L8R? Times have changed. Keep up, or get your Instagram ac- count deleted. Heck, some golf clubs are even allowing—gasp!—blue jeans in the grill rooms now. Next thing you know, the kids will be listening to that devil music, rock and roll. So, how can we make the golf experience more fun? Some suggestions: Encourage a Looser Dress Code: You can’t get the tech generation—which thinks tying shoes counts as dressing
up—to play golf if they have to wear khakis and a collared shirt. Let ’em untuck the tee shirts, wear the skinny jeans and trod the fairways in their
Puma sneakers. Sell the hipster stuff in pro shops. It’ll fly off the shelves.
76 /
NCGA.ORG / SPRING 2014
MURPHY’S
Train Pro Shop Workers to be Welcoming, Not Judging:
Some pro shop workers are friendly and open-armed. Some, however, run the place with a grim purpose, as if in charge of a funeral home. If they don’t think you’re up to snuff, they grunt at you. Let’s pump some music into the pro shop, and teach pros checking you in that everyone who walks on a golf course to spend dough is worth a fist bump and an encouraging “Fairways and greens!” upon exit. Floating Skins Games for All: Sure,
we all know the sharks who have those cut-throat Skins games in which they speak their own code and language. Heck, those things are so exclusive, you
have to know a secret password. But what about golf courses instituting fun Skins games for all manner of player? If you have a GHIN number, you can play Skins against players of your ilk, with all scorecards from that day eligible to win a pro shop gift card. If you’re a 20 handicap, you shouldn’t be shunned from a Skins game like Anthony Michael Hall was shunned as the geek in “Sixteen Candles.” Let everyone have the fun. Shot Clocks and Jokes: We’re all in agree- ment that slow play is the biggest bummer this side of a four-putt. An investment in a 40-second shot timer on each tee box— like a basketball game— would give a not-so-subtle reminder to each player that, yes, he or she is on the clock. Plus, it’d add an element of excitement to the golf shot when the clock approaches zero. And if marshals are needed to swing by in a cart to spur pace of play, let’s not make it an unpleasant experience. Getting scolded by a marshal can be embarrassing. So every marshal should include, with each slow-play admonishment, a golf joke he can tell in 30 seconds or less. Heck, make it a knock-knock. Humor helps. Donut Holes and Chicken Wings: We’ve all heard of the
grandmother who shows her love with food. Let golf courses adopt the same theory. For a price that won’t break the bank of a muni, how about a tray of donut holes for the morning crew near the putting green, and a tray of chicken wings for those of us trudg- ing off 18. Full bellies on the first tee, and exchanging tales of our rounds over complimentary wings would make golf courses happy places to
be. Munchies go a long way to making us happy. Hey. We’re easy.
MAKE GOLF FUN
BRIAN MURPHY hosts the KNBR morning show “Murph and Mac” and was the San Francisco Chronicle’s golf writer from 2001-2004.
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