Walk It Off

By Lee Pace

For nearly half a century, from the advent of the motorized golf car in the 1950s through the end of the 20th century, the golf industry organized itself around extending the footprint of golf courses and generating income from cart fees. So what if there were a hundred yards from one green to the next tee (with three income-producing residential lots shoe-horned in)? Golfers could zip from point A to point B in a snap. And that seemed to suit Americans just fine as they ate more fast food and drank more soda pop.

Fortunately, many resisted the trend.

Dr. John Ellis joined the Country Club of North Carolina in 1973 and has served on numerous boards and committees and in officer roles. During the USGA’s initiative in the early 2000s to promote walking, he took the lead within the club to develop a policy to encourage members to walk.

“We developed a policy that said we think walking is a part of the game and should be allowed,” Ellis says. “You can really enjoy the game walking. As a doctor, obviously it’s the right thing to do for your health. We realized we would lose some income on the carts but felt it was the right thing to do. Allowing walking better met the needs of our members, which is what a private club is supposed to do anyway.”

Ellis remembers one member standing up at a meeting and suggesting they apply a “trail fee” to walkers.

Ellis told the gentleman: “We encourage people to walk and hope you will, too.”

Today, nearly one-quarter of all rounds at CCNC are walked.

“We have people in their 80s walking and carrying,” Ellis says. “To me it’s one of the special things about being a private club rather than a resort operation. You can trade off the income from carts to do the right thing. I don’t ever see that changing.”

Fortunately, if you’re playing CCNC, Pinehurst No. 2, Pine Needles, Mid Pines and many other courses in the Sandhills, you have the option to take a cart, walk and carry your bag or walk and take a trolley. At Pinehurst, there’s a caddie staff on hand and many courses in the area can provide a caddie with a day’s notice.

That’s quite the contrast from, for example, the days at Pinehurst Resort where you had to ride or take a caddie. And it wasn’t that long ago.

“So many other places allowed you to walk and carry your bag,” says Ben Bridgers, director of golf at Pinehurst. “People would ask us and we’d have to say no and it became a negative. I like to get out and walk and carry. It’s good exercise and it’s refreshing. More and more we’d hear it. It just didn’t make sense to say no.”

That’s why Pinehurst in 2017 changed its policy to allow resort guests and members to walk and carry, take a caddie or ride. In 2019 it expanded that policy to include the push-cart and purchased a fleet of push-carts for use by resort guests.

“We said there was no point to frustrating people who wanted to walk and carry,” says head pro Matt Barksdale. “And the timing on the push-carts turned out to be perfect. That was one year before Covid hit, and after that, you couldn’t buy a push-cart. There was a run on them nationwide. There was some concern all of this might have an effect on the caddie program, but it hasn’t slowed down the caddie business one bit.”

That evolution coincided with the opening of Gil Hanse’s renovation of the No. 4 course. Pinehurst officials wanted to restrict carts to the paths along the perimeters of each hole as it does on No. 2. Allowing push-carts made sense and fit nicely with Hanse’s view of golf that it is a walking sport.

“Cart paths. I hate cart paths,” Hanse says. “I just absolutely abhor them. That’s probably the most unfortunate aspect of American golf. I’m a big believer that unless you need a cart to play golf from a physical standpoint, you should be walking. The course is intended to be felt through your feet; it’s intended to be observed and absorbed at three miles an hour and not 40 miles an hour.”

The Brits have it right. You need to be on life-support to get permission to take one of the few motorized carts — or “buggies” as they’re known in the U.K.

“Whatever the conditions — in wind, rain or hail — Brits grab a trolley and off they go,” Craig Morrison noted in GOLF Magazine in 2015. “At Royal Portrush, in Northern Ireland, there’s a regular group of sprightly octogenarians, all hip and knee replacements, who amble around the course every morning — rain or shine — on foot.”

One point of early resistance toward to push-cart at American resorts was they had what was felt in some circles as “muni-golf” feel.

“I don’t accept this stigma that a push-cart is beneath a private club, because you go to Scotland and Ireland and Australia and all the top clubs have them,” says Hanse says.

Tom Pashley, president and CEO of Pinehurst Inc., said in the spring of 2020 after his resort’s nine courses had reopened under strict Covid-containment protocols,

“One of the things I hope comes out of this is that more people will enjoy the walking game. I think that can be a nice outcome — more people walking the golf course.”

Christian Hafer is a photographer and golfer who founded the Burning Cart Society, essentially an online, social media enclave of golfers who believe every golf cart should be burned. (Or better yet, bombed to smithereens.)

“We are the like-minded few who carry our clubs in all opportunities on the golf course,” he says. “We live for those moments on the course and opening the eyes of uninitiated. Walking the course is golf in its purest form.”

And there are plenty of opportunities to walk the taut playing surfaces of the Sandhills.

Lee Pace is a freelance golf writer who has written about Sandhills area golf for four decades and is the author of club histories about Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Forest Creek.