ABOUT SCRUFFY'S WORD

Scruffy's Word is another opportunity to introduce the characters of Scruffy & Pals.
Here you will meet me,
Scruffy,
and my pals and learn about our personalities as we give humorous and sometimes serious tips, opinions and commentary on various golfing subjects and product reviews. I hope you will enjoy your visit....be sure to take your time and look around. I have carefully selected a lot of stuff that I think you will be interested in.
OH...one more thing, we are the feature cartoon in the UNIVERSAL GOLF MAGAZINE
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Speed of Play

"Genetic Code" of a Golf Swing

Hi, I am Count, another of Scruffy's golfing pals. Hoss and I are having a discussion about speed of play and how much time, during an average round of golf is actually spent playing golf. He mentioned a new discovery by John Novosel at Tour Tempo who has broken the “genetic code” of the golf swing through the discovery of a 3:1 ratio of time between the backswing and the downswing, which he found only takes between .93 for some professional types, and up to 3.0 seconds for us recreational golfers. His discovery has re-defined tempo in the golf world.

Since 3.0 seconds is the slowest measurement of time it takes to actually strike a ball, I asked Hoss why it takes so long to play a round of golf; what do we do with the rest of the time we spend on the course, which led me to do some figuring.

The Golf Swing

From
Tour Tempo, we know the golf swing takes between .93 to 3.0 seconds to execute; so we will use 2.0 seconds as an average. The “golf swing” is being defined as the elapsed time from when the player starts the backswing to the actual moment of impact with the ball and ends at the end of the follow through. Let us assume the average score during a normal round of 18 holes is 90 strokes. That means the golfer actually only spent 180 seconds swinging the club at the ball; that is only 3 minutes.

Pace of Play Rating System

Mr. Dean L. Kunth, a math whiz and the prime developer of the USGA’s Course Rating and Slope Rating System, used throughout the United States and in most foreign countries, has also developed the USGA Pace Rating System. The PRS estimates time of play based on handicap/skill levels and par. Par 3’s should take 9 minutes, par 4’s 12 minutes, and par 5’s 18 minutes. Most golf courses are designed with four par 3’s twelve par 4’s and two par 5’s. Using the PRS, an average round should be played in 3.6 hours.

Logistical Positioning

Logistical positioning or getting from tee to green and green to tee eats up time and distance. Most golf courses are between 5,500 to 7,300 yards, depending on what tee you are playing. We will use 6,150 yards for our exercise, but considering we don’t always hit the ball in a straight line, let's say we actually cover 1 ½ times that distance by transversing the fairways and rough getting to our ball.

A
golf cart will travel about 10mph +- 3mph and an average walker around 3mph. There are 1,760 yards in a mile, so a course measuring 6,160 yards would be 3.5 miles long, but remember, we are going to be covering half again that distance or 9,225 yards which means we cover around 5.2 miles of distance during a round of golf.

One golfer riding at a speed of 10mph, can cover 9,225 yards in about 32 min and a walker in about 1hr 45min and both rider and walker only use 3 minutes to actually swing at the golf ball. So, where do we use the rest of our time while on the golf course?

Hoss has some ideas about this question, so be sure to check back later.

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