Play-Faster Plan Urged : L.A. Golfers: Will It Be Hit and Run?

For golfers trying to escape the fast pace of Los Angeles life by playing a leisurely round on the municipal links, the word from City Hall is . . . play faster.

In a measure aimed at the hackers and plodders who clog local fairways, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky has proposed a system of time clocks and cycle-riding marshals to keep play moving at the city’s 13 public golf courses.

He said the plan, subject to a City Council vote in October, is patterned after a tough new policy in Denver, where golfers are banished to the galleries if they can’t complete half of an 18-hole course in 2 hours and 20 minutes. City park officials said the new “Go Golf” policy could take effect by November.

“Slow play is without a doubt one of the major problems at our city golf courses,” Yaroslavsky said. “You have people engaging in family gossip . . . (or) people who think they’re Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus, and they’ve got to read the green 17 different ways. You have to . . . agitate them to get with it.”

Yaroslavsky, who golfs two or three times a year on city courses, said marshals mounted on cycles would monitor problem points along the course where foursomes tend to pile up. Golfers would have to clock in at the first tee and would be timed by the marshals at selected points on the course.

Yaroslavsky said he believes he can muster the council votes for approval of such a system. He said initial support for the plan has been strong because of overcrowded conditions.

Parks spokesman Al Goldfarb said more than 30,000 golfers played a record 1,172,671 rounds at city-run courses last year.

None of those rounds threatened golfer Rick Baker’s standard for speedy play. In 1982, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, he completed an 18-hole, 6,142-yard course in Queensland, Australia, in 25 minutes, 48.47 seconds.

“That’s fast,” commented Kate Rapoport, president of the 250-member Rancho Women’s Golf Club in West Los Angeles, and a supporter of Yaroslavsky’s motion. “He must have played alone.”