Imagine you are out having dinner in a fancy restaurant and the server is approaching your table. Do you choke on your lobster? Spill your Champagne? Hide under the tablecloth Of course not! You assume your liaison to a wonderful meal is checking to see if everything is OK or if you need anything. If you need water, salt or the Heimlich Maneuver, here’s your chance to ask.
Colorado’s course marshals of today, once widely known as rangers, often bear titles of Player Ambassador and Player Assistant because they serve as customer service representatives. Each spring, golf courses and clubs put out calls for help that contain skill keywords like “friendly,” “outgoing” and “service-minded” in hopes of finding marshals that players will enjoy encountering.
And for the most part, they’ve succeeded. Our marshals bring us cold water, drop off the wedge we left in a bunker, tell jokes and even slip us a golf ball or two they’ve found on their rounds. “All I have to do is be nice to people who are out here to have a good time,” City Park player ambassador Ron Blackmon told me when I accompanied him on his rounds to see just what marshals do.
Of course, there’s more. Ron routinely got out of his cart and raked bunkers for players who had fallen a little behind. Marshals will take us back to the clubhouse when we’re sick or the wife’s gone into labor, and they call for the chopper when someone’s had a heart attack on the course.
“Their job is to help,” says Ben Pennymon, Director of Golf at the CGA’s busy CommonGround. “I know people don’t think of them that way, but that’s the reality, and I would use them as a resource, knowing that they are employed for the entire purpose of helping the golf course to be better, to run better and for everyone collectively to have a positive experience while they’re out playing golf.”
Of course, they do seem to show up when everyone in our group has just quadruple-bogeyed and now has some catching up to do with the foursome in front. This might be a coincidence, might not be, because keeping pace of play moving by checking times or monitoring electronically is also part of their job.
If that’s the part that makes you nervous, I suggest a little friendly interaction initiated by you and your group, with eye contact and smiles. Try: “We just had the worst hole ever! Don’t worry, we’ll catch back up to the group in front of us.”
Or, if your group seems to be keeping up, you could ask how everything is moving along today.
As for that male marshal who keeps showing up to chat with your all-female foursome, sure, you could cry sexism but more likely he’s lonely. No need to give him a hug, but, rather than sending him away, try embracing the opportunity to get over your fear of one of your course’s most helpful staffers.
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.