DEAR MOLLY

Written by CGA Team | May 14, 2026

Slow Play Stresses Me Out

Dear Molly: I’ve always enjoyed the competition and social interaction of CGA events, but last year I ran into a stressful situation. My cart mate (not partner) struggled all day, losing balls and even once waiting for a ruling. The other twosome began moving ahead to try to keep us on pace, which made me even more stressed! What are the CGA’s policies and expectations in a case like this?

Wow, that does sound stressful! There you were, trying to play a hard game well, keep a good pace of play and be a good cart mate – all at the same time that, as the saying goes, “stuff just happened.”

In a case like yours, a bit of knowledge should help: The CGA developed policies and expectations with precisely these situations in mind, so as not to penalize the player who is just having a bad day and certainly not his or her companions.

For the details, I turned to former CWGA executive director Laura Robinson, who now serves the CGA – and, in winter, the Florida Golf Association – as a volunteer rules official.

She sent me to the CGA’s Pace of Play Policy, which is included in the information distributed to all players who enter CGA tournaments. It describes how the CGA sets a pace of play, including putting time markers on scorecards, and monitors it by having volunteers record times at various holes. If an official determines that your group meets the POPP definition of “out of position,” most likely you’ll be advised to play ready golf and try to catch up to the group in front.

This may sound stressful, but the volunteers do their best for it not to be.

“CGA rules officials are trained on the best practices of how to manage the situation,” Laura says. “Measures include providing specific information regarding time; giving groups feedback as to how they are doing if they have been warned; picking an appropriate place to speak to a group such as when everyone has holed out, or when everyone has teed off; trying to determine if one player is holding up the group and time them if necessary to have the data at hand; don't ‘hover’ by driving down the fairway behind the group as that might make a player more nervous; giving a slow group a few holes to catch up; determining if lost balls or rulings may have caused a group to be behind their allotted time.”

Lost balls can certainly impede POP. The other cart helped things by moving ahead when it could do so safely and without distraction. You could help by grabbing a club and walking to your ball while your cart mate is searching or dropping. If your cart mate wants a ruling, you could suggest playing two balls instead of waiting for an official to arrive.

Generally, everyone should go ahead and play when it’s safe to do so, or as the Rules say, “without interference or distraction.”

“Remember in stroke play, players can play in any order including in the teeing area and on the putting green,” Laura says.

The POPP describes the process of timing and penalizing slow players, but many of the things that happen on a bad day, such as looking for a lost ball, taking a drop and returning to the tee after a lost or out-of-bounds shot, don’t fit the criteria of slow play that results in penalty strokes.

So your cart mate’s bad golf needn’t stress you out. Remember, in golf as in life, so much stuff happens that is not under our control that we must develop strategies to handle our emotions. For help with that, here’s a good resource from the CGA archives: Train Your Brain.

I try to remember that a championship-winning soccer coach once told me there was no pressure in his line of work: “Stress,” he said, “is having a wife, four kids, a mortgage and no job.” We’re just playing golf, right?

Do you have a question about golf etiquette, golf relationships or the culture of golf in Colorado? Email it to Molly McMulligan, the CGA’s on-the-course advisor on how to have more fun on the golf course, and follow @MollyMcMulligan on Instagram. Her creator, researcher and writer is golf journalist and CGA member Susan Fornoff.