Hearing a course is instituting the 90-degree cart rule isn’t quite as annoying as cartpath-only, but it can still leave golfers frustrated… and confused. To learn more about why courses might choose to use this policy and how golfers can abide by it, we asked Chad Allen, director of agronomy at The Club at Chatham Hills in Westfield, Indiana. Allen is a seven-year member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.
Chad, first off, why do courses institute the 90-degree cart rule?
There are a couple of reasons and they all stem back to one thing: moisture. You want to be able to preserve the turf as long as you can. For us at Chatham Hills in central Indiana, we’re open from the middle of March to the end of November, right? That’s a long time. We’re doing 20,000 rounds a year.
What we’re trying to do is mitigate as much damage going on and off the fairways because people are creatures of habit, and it’s a herd mentality. So if you can get somebody, especially when it’s wet, who is driving too much in the fairways, that can cause damage.
It really boils down to making sure that you’re giving the golfer the best conditions possible for the longest amount of time. The 90-degree rule helps protect against rutting and tracking.
The 90-degree rule can also help in the summer during droughts. When the course is really dry and you’re running across the grass all the time with a cart, you’re going to burn the tips of the grass. Having that 90-degree rule helps mitigate a lot of that traffic.
OK, so how can golfers properly abide by the 90-degree rule?
You drive up to where the ball has landed, and you make sure that where you’re going to be entering the fairway is an accessible area. Then you’re going to take a hard right or a hard left and go straight out to the ball. After you hit your ball you drive up just a little bit, but then you cut right back over.
You’re not driving through the fairway to your next shot, you’re not driving through the fairway to cut over across the approach or anything. You’re going to come right back.
Like I said, you should drive up a little bit and then cut over. As a superintendent, I would much rather see you coming in, hit that shot, and then make a teardrop to come out because it’s those hard turns that can cause a lot of damage. Take a little more time with your turn.
We do the same thing with our equipment as well. I want people to make nice wide turns because when you start doing these short turns, especially over the course of a season, you’re going to see it harm the grass and that’s going to affect playability.
Do golfers really use the 90-degree rule?
No, but that’s OK because if a few of them do it, then that’s better than none. You’re always going to have some people who follow the rules and some people who don’t. I don’t lose sleep at night knowing that half my membership might not do the 90-degree rule. I’m a glass-half-full guy.
How often do you institute the rule?
I do it quite often, to the chagrin of my members sometimes. But if you can communicate what we just talked about to the membership, then they’re going to be much more apt to abide by that and to understand the reasoning behind it.
I think every superintendent would love to be cartpath-only all the time, but you’re just not going to be able to do that. You’re going to really hurt your revenue stream when it comes down to it. That said, sometimes you need to institute the rule, and I’ll never lose sleep over doing what I feel as a professional is right for the turf.
