I posted this comment on the review and I’ll repost it here. I got in touch with Wes Jones about this one and received a quick response.

Paraphrasing:

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. At Birkdale our goal is to have all players enjoy themselves and feel they have received a good value. It is difficult to please all the people all the time and unfortunately we were not able to do that with Mr. Looney’s group… a group teed off at 8:23 and then the first of Mr. Looney’s three foursomes teed off at 8:35, 12 minutes later… his group played the front nine in 2:38. His group had been warned for slow play twice in the first seven holes. This forced me to make the difficult decision of asking his group to skip the 10th hole. We ! want our guests to enjoy themselves but not at the expense of our other guests… the two groups following Mr. Looney’s group played the front nine in 2 1/2 hours and well under two hours on the back nine after his group left.

On June 4th we had 182 rounds played and 144 players after Mr. Looney’s group at 8:35. If I had allowed his group to continue on their pace we would have had our other rounds in the 5 1/2 hour range or worse. I do not want Birkdale to have a slow play reputation. In short, we would like people to play Birkdale. You will find the course conditions very nice, we take pace of play seriously and as Mr. Looney said, we have a friendly staff.

Sincerely,

Wesley Jones
Birkdale Golf Club
General Manager

Pace of play is a touchy subject. Obviously, you hate to be playing fast and easy, then get caught up in a logjam where you are waiting on every shot. On the other hand, if you are having fun but get behind because of a few stray shots where you lose time trying to find a lost ball or get back in play, it can be nearly impossible to catch up and get back on time with other groups on the course. So it is indeed a tough situation for the general manager. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 — which is worse: disappointing one or two groups by having them skip a hole to keep up pace of play or angering half a day’s worth of groups that play 5 hour rounds?

I think in this situation you’ve got to be 100% sure that groups are truly backing up and tee times are running late before you ask a group to skip holes. If the groups behind are not complaining, not waiting, then there shouldn’t be an issue. I’m not sure whether the GM made the right decision in this case, but it does seem like he carefully considered everything before speaking to the group.

I can certainly understand why you guys left. This has only happened to me once or twice in my 11 years of playing and I was very angry. I’m glad you had a good experience over at Fox Den. I’ve yet to play it, but keep hearing great things.

Thanks for the feedback.