Helpful Hint: Get a Grip

You stand on the tee box, casting a piercing glare down the fairway at a player 180 yards away, in the right rough.

You know the type. He’s 230 yards from the green but he can see it from where his ball is, so to him that means he can reach it. A true believer in the old I-can-see-it-so-it’s-reachable theory.

He’s waiting for the group ahead of him to clear the green so he can give it a go.

Meanwhile, you wait on the tee, getting antsy. The group behind you reaches their green and the kindling for a log jam is created.

“You can’t get there, you dope!” you feel like screaming. Only your golf etiquette stops you.

Such are the problems at over-crowded golf courses these days, situations that lead to something most golfers wish was extinct--the dreaded five-hour round.

But there he is, Mr. Macho himself, having watched too many clips of Tiger Woods and John Daly, standing there waiting to hit.

A message to those of you who might do the same (and you know who you are):

Lay up!

That’s right, lay up. Put away that three wood--you could barely hit the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica Pier with that thing anyway.

Think about it. You just hit a 180-yard drive. What on earth makes you think you’re going to hit your three wood 230?

Listen to Tom Ziola, a Castaic resident who is a regular at the Encino and Balboa golf courses.

“The problem with me is if I wait, I screw up the shot completely,” he said.

Hit an eight or nine iron and move it along so the folks behind you can do what we all came to do: play golf.

If we wanted to spend the day waiting around, we’d have gone to the DMV or Disneyland, or we would have played at Rancho Park, home of the six-hour round.

Laying up on a par-four hole is not such a preposterous idea. Sometimes it’s good golf, saving a bad shank and a double bogey.

Laying up to within pitching wedge distance is likely to leave you a good shot at an up and down par--bogey at worst--and you won’t get frustrated about hitting a bad shot.

And, most importantly, you’ll be out of everyone else’s way.

There are, in fact, several ways for golfers to speed up their rounds.

Read the posted signs, including the ones that instruct you to wave up the group on par threes and others that encourage you to play tees to your ability.

“You can put all kinds of signs out there but people don’t read them,” said Jim Dodds, manager at the Sepulveda Golf Complex.

The sign that says, “Play ready golf,” means play when you are ready. Don’t worry about who is farthest from the hole.

This isn’t the PGA Tour. Nobody from the Royal and Ancient is going to miraculously appear to chastise you for hitting out of turn.

This goes double when you reach the green. If you happen to leave a putt short, putt it out. That makes the process a lot faster than having to mark it, then go through the same routine again later.

If you putt right away, you still have the feel for the lay of the land. It’s easier to make the putt if you hit it quickly.

Of course, nobody likes to be told they are playing slow, because nobody thinks they are.

“You have to be careful how you approach slow players,” said Wrynn Guenther, a course marshal at Encino and Balboa. “It’s a touchy situation. Most of the time I don’t have to say anything, I just show up and it’s amazing how people start looking behind them to see where they are.”

Last but not least, stop with the mulligans already! It’s an absurd concept, the mulligan. So what if everyone knows you’re better than that first drive you hit? You hit it. You earned the 50-yard dribbler.

Just take a deep breath, put your driver in your bag and walk to your ball.

And for heaven’s sake, when you get there, don’t entertain the idea of reaching the green with your next shot.