Pace of play in college golf is a serious problem, and we are working hard at the NCCGA to pick up the pace #whilewereyoung. Sean Keane, Regional Coordinator of the Capitol Region and leading member of Maryland's club golf team is passionate about improving pace of play in college golf and growing golf in his region. Below are his thoughts on the matters.
Thoughts on pace of play
Speeding up pace of play in our college golf tournaments will be a crucial aspect of improving the overall quality of our region. At this point, we don't have the staff and support of organizations like the AJGA and USGA who have tremendous structure and organization in implementing and monitoring their pace of play policies. That said, we can definitely improve.
One of the big challenges I faced is that it's hard to run a tournament single-handedly as I didn't have much help from other students. The pro did help me at the second course and I had some volunteers which helped as well. The new NCCGA policy of having all walking tournaments (unless the course requires a cart) will be great to have more consistency to all of our groups.
I also think it's great that we are now going to have a volunteer on each of the nines working on monitoring and enforcing pace of play penalties. College golf tournaments can get really slow and have dedicated people specifically focused on pace of play will make a huge difference. Across the NCCGA all of our rounds should be less than 5 hours.
Summmer Plans
I'm caddying at Suburban Golf Club in Union, NJ, a private course. They have a pretty big caddy program. Many college golfers in the NCCGA are caddying this summer, this will be my 5th summer as a caddy.
What did you learn last semester?
Setting up the first tournament was a bit of a challenge dealing with the weather and a one day rain out. I learned how to deal with the problems that went along with that and got a better feel for how the tournaments themselves are organized. I played in the first tournament and decided not to play in the second tournament which helped out a lot with organization and pace of play.
What are your goals for the Capitol Region?
We are excited to play some higher end courses for our tournaments in the fall. As for my Maryland club golf team, we are planning on having a second team which is a big step forward for our program and growing college golf on campus.
I also want to do a better job communicating with teams on social media using twitter in particular. I started off strong with social media but it became hard for me to keep track of it as the season went on. I want to try using Buffer to get more of my tweets out.
**Contact Sean on Twitter @NCCGACapitol
