It’s time for the 13-hole course

The golf hangover of the May long weekend is still lingering, along with a little guilt, and even a trace of regret.

Surely I’m not the first golfer who rolls into the driveway five or more hours after leaving and questions if it was time well spent, especially on a long weekend.

More and more I find myself wondering what else I could do with that time, or some of that time, if it could be given back to me.

Golf is an amazing game and powerful social connector. But it does take up a disproportionate amount of time. It’s at times like these that my thoughts turn to the 13-hole course at Bandon Dunes, called The Preserve.

I have seen firsthand some of the world’s most popular short courses, and am very intrigued by the concept of real golf being played over shorter versions of the standard 18-hole layout. All too often we associate shorter courses with less demanding, less scenic, less interesting holes. But that doesn’t have to be the case at all. And experiments like the one at Bandon Dunes designed by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore are proving it.

There are lots of threats to a more prosperous future for the game of golf, but none seems as ominous as the time factor. For the most part, the time problem is directly linked to the length of the courses and number of holes we feel we have to play for it to be a legitimate round.

Sure, all of our clubs have sterling examples of foursomes who go out early and play 18 holes in two or three hours, but those are the exceptions. So often we blame slow play for the reason why golf takes so long to play, but the real reason is that someone centuries ago in Scotland decided that the first course was going to be 18 holes, and no one, until now, has really challenged that.

When we play a 50-minute beer league hockey game we still think we’ve played real hockey, even if it wasn’t three 20-minute periods NHL-style. Runners love to test their metal in half marathons and full marathons, but an early morning half hour jog can be just as invigorating and just as rewarding. And no one questions whether it was really a true run.

In the coming decades, more and more of our leisure time will be spent in activities where the individual can dictate exactly how long he or she wants to play, instead of the sport telling you how long you must give it.

The Irish and Scottish have managed their way around the time issue by playing mostly matches and walking off the course when the match is over, well before the three hour mark. But for some reason us North Americans can’t seem to wrap our heads around this. We want to count every shot, fill in every square on the scorecard, even though 99.999 percent of us will never make a living playing golf.

Somehow we have to get beyond the notion that unless you play 18 holes you haven’t played a real round. And that 9 or 12 or 15-hole courses could not only open up our days for other activities, if done right they could fuel a resurgence in people trying the game for the first time, or playing well into their 80s and 90s. That would be cool.