Cart Travel

If not managed, golf cart travel can adversely affect the overall condition and playability of the golf course. As a result, hundreds of staff hours are spent each season on installation, moving, and adjusting ropes, to preserve vital play areas from cart traffic. Tree lined fairways and green complexes constricting cart travel to defined areas, heavy clay soils prone to compaction, and older turf varieties are a few of the factors adversely affecting turf durability when subjected to cart traffic.   Moreover, courses such as ours, originally designed for walking, lack design provisions for cart travel or cartpaths.   Modern golf course architecture integrates course design with cartpath location to provide a safe and aesthetically acceptable routing of cartpaths while preserving vital play areas.  The USGA has produced a series of course etiquette videos that include a section on cart travel (click on the Golf Etiquette tab on the main blog page).   The picture below illustrates the vital areas of the green complex off limits to cart traffic. The grounds staff would prefer to spend hundreds of hours grooming vital play areas and not protecting them from cart traffic.         

Carts should remain on cartpaths adjacent to green and tee complexes

 

Players with handicap flags are encouraged to park in the approach area and walk onto the green. Non handicap carts should remain on the cartpaths where provided or stay back 50 feet from tee and green surfaces.     

Pull carts provide a means of walking the course without the burden of carrying a bag. Although much less destructive to turf than electric carts, pull carts operated too close to greens and tees have a detrimental effect on collars and green surrounds.  Repeated use of pull carts and foot traffic over the same area compact soils and weakens the turf.  Especially with warmer temperatures and humidity on the rise, the effects of pull carts are evident on green collars such as #2 right, # 5 right, #7 right, #8 right, #10 right to name a few.  Players using pull carts typically travel in the same location on every green site, which is usually convenient to the next tee.  In contrast, a player carrying his/her bag, or a caddy, evenly distributes foot traffic by approaching the green from various directions depending on where their ball comes to rest on the green surface.  When 20 or more pull cart players walk over the same area daily for 4 or 5 rounds each week, the accumulative effects are clearly detrimental. The picture below illustrates USGA guideline for proper use of pull carts near green surfaces.