Pace of Play Tips for Young Junior Golfers

Slow play is rarely about how fast someone swings the club. It is almost always about what happens before the swing: walking to the wrong ball first, standing over a shot deciding what to hit, or not being ready when it becomes your turn. Young players are more prone to all three simply because the routine is newer to them, not because anything is wrong with their game.

The fix is not to rush a young player through their shots. It is to move the thinking earlier, so the actual swing happens the moment they are ready, instead of after a long pause once they arrive at the ball.

Ready golf simply means playing when you are ready rather than waiting for strict honors order whenever it is safe to do so. It is for stroke play, where Rule 6.4b of the Rules of Golf allows and encourages it; in match play, where the order of play matters, Rule 6.4a lets an opponent cancel a stroke played out of turn. Combined with a few specific habits, it keeps a round moving without ever pressuring a young player to swing before they feel set:

• Walk directly to your own ball, not a group huddle, as soon as a shot ends.
• Start thinking about club and target while walking, so the decision is close to made by the time you arrive.
• In stroke play, play out of turn when it is safe and faster to do so, rather than waiting for exact honors.
• Leave the green the moment everyone has holed out, and mark the card at the next tee.

The time between shots is where most pace gets lost or saved. A young player who uses the walk to the ball to notice the wind, the lie, and the target is doing real preparation, not wasting time, and arrives ready to play almost immediately. A player who arrives at the ball and only then starts looking around is doing the same preparation, just later, which is what actually slows a group down.

This is a habit worth naming out loud a few times until it becomes automatic: “think while you walk, not once you get there.”

Pace habits are far easier to build during a casual round than to correct mid-tournament, where the pressure of a rules official or an impatient group behind makes everything harder to fix in the moment. Play practice rounds with a rough sense of time per hole, and gently prompt a young player to notice when a group has opened up ahead, which is the clearest sign of falling behind.

Our practice plan for ages 9 to 11 and etiquette guide for a first competitive round both pair well with pace work, since ready-golf habits and general etiquette reinforce each other.

If a young player is falling behind, a calm, specific prompt works far better than a general “hurry up,” which mostly adds pressure without giving useful direction. Something like “let's think about the shot on the walk over” gives a concrete habit to apply, while “you're too slow” only tells a player they are doing something wrong without saying what to change.

Avoid raising pace as an issue in the moments before a tee time or during a tournament round itself; that is exactly the kind of pre-round pressure our guide on what not to say before a tournament covers. Work on pace in practice, not on the first tee.

A young player who consistently falls behind is not being careless or difficult. It almost always traces back to one of a few specific, fixable habits: deciding too late, wandering instead of walking directly to the ball, or over-reading short putts. Once you can name which one it is, it becomes a normal coaching point rather than a character issue, and it usually resolves within a handful of rounds once a player knows what to watch for.

If pace issues persist despite the basics, it is also worth checking whether the format itself is the mismatch; our guide on moving from 9 holes to 18 sets out two organizers' nine-hole and eighteen-hole divisions and a worksheet of questions for the family, with pace as one of its rows.