Since golf etiquette is important, who better to expound on the subject than golf enthusiast Peter Post, the great grandson of manners maven Emily Post? The author offers advice on the many do’s and don’ts that a person needs to know to play a proper round of golf, from knowing how to deal with slow play to when a “gimme” putt is acceptable.
Here’s an excerpt from “The Unwritten Rules of Golf”:
“Of the specific course-related behaviors cited by Post Golf Survey respondents, one faux pas stands out above all others: failing to repair ball marks on the green. For the life of me, I just can’t understand how a person can hit a shot onto a green, watch the ball land, and then not look for and repair the mark that the ball has just made. But they do. On any given green during a round, I can easily find three, four, or more untouched ball marks that were freshly made that day.
“What makes this failure so tragic is that if a ball mark is repaired immediately after it’s made, the spot quickly grows back into a smooth, unscarred stretch of grass. A ball mark left unprepared, however, is an unfixable blemish that will remain visible for weeks. Even worse, these ball marks aren’t found just on the periphery of the green. They often occur near the flagstick, where they can potentially affect the putting of every golfer playing that hole.”