A few friends and I had a foursome at Edgewood and teed off around 7:30a on a Saturday morning in September. The course was moderately busy but there were no long lines or holdups on any of the holes ahead of us. It was early and we took our time for the first few holes, thoroughly enjoying ourselves because it was a beautiful morning.
Somewhere around the 4th hole, we noticed the course "marshall" stalking us as we played. He watched us from his cart atop a nearby hill until he finally drew close enough to tell us we were playing too slow. No problem, we told him. We'd pick up the pace. And we did. A hole or two later, we noticed the threesome behind us was on our heels, so we offered to let them play through. After all, a threesome plays quicker than a foursome. They were totally cool about it, in no hurry at all, also enjoying the morning.
Rounding some trees by the 7th hole, we find the marshall, who must've been about 70 or 80 with the attitude of a retired cop, spying on us from his cart. Fed up with the hassle, we confronted him and he was suddenly adamant that we were playing too slow, that we weren't keeping up with the pace he was trying to set for the course. None of us are pros, and we weren't in a hurry to play, but by no means were we disrupting the flow of the course. We only ended up holding up two parties behind us on the entire front 9, and let each (one threesome and one twosome) play through.
Starting the back 9, the marshall was following our every shot, making us all extremely uncomfortable and agitated. I'm rusty, having not golfed in years, so I ended up picking up my ball a few times in the interest of moving the game along. On the tenth tee, we were set to tee off when the sixsome party behind us hit into our fairway, almost hitting us as we stood there. We necessarily were forced to wait while they searched for their ball and cleared the area for us to play. The marshall couldn't comprehend this and needless to say did not give us the benefit of the doubt, and again stopped us. At this point he was very flustered and insisted he would have to move us up a few holes. We rejected this preposterous offer as we'd paid our money (almost $50/head) like everyone else and were here to play the full 18. We calmly explained that we had sped up our game and were doing everything in our power to play more quickly but there are intangible circumstances in the game of golf that can delay the pace, i.e. smaller groups playing behind us, other people hitting into our hole, etc. Needless to say, having to stop every hole and argue with the marshall certainly wasn't helping us move along any quicker!
In the end, we got tired of the blatant harassment and insisted that he either leave us alone or refund our money. The man acted like we tried to assault him and called in backup. Thankfully, cooler heads in the clubhouse prevailed and the course manager agreed to refund our money. We explained our side of the story but they weren't having it. They were all to quick to grab our money first thing in the door, but had zero patience or tolerance for anyone that wasn't less than a 10 handicap. Obviously I'll never be giving them my patronage again, nor will anyone I know. read more