Golfers have many bad habits.
Any swing instructor could tell you that.
Any superintendent could confirm it, too.
The folks in charge of golf-course maintenance deal with all kinds of headaches in their day to day, from droughts, nematodes and broken drainage pipes to dull mower blades, frost delays and damaged sprinkler heads. The list goes on.
But the biggest drag?
Don’t even get Matt Guilfoil started.
“If you’ve got a kid in college who is studying psychology, maybe you could get them to try to figure out what happens to otherwise ordinary human beings when they decide to head out to the golf course,” Guilfoil says. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s some kind of crazy rewiring of the brain and happens over and over. The instant that person decides to load up the clubs into the trunk of the car and head to the golf course, a strange transformation comes over them.”
They grow arrogant and entitled. Or angry and inconsiderate. Or impatient and ill-humored. Or some combination of the above.
Death of the golf-ball washer: Why this once-familiar staple is falling out of favor
Guilfoil is the superintendent at Desert Canyon Golf Club, in Arizona. He is also the voluble co-host of From the Jingweeds, a podcast devoted to the turf-care trade, so he opines often about his work.
Of the things that drive him crazy, golfer habits top his list.
And he’s not alone. A lot of superintendents feel the same.
But don’t take our word for it. Earlier this year, at a trade show put on by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, GOLF.com turned on the cameras and asked supers to start talking.
Check out the video above to see and hear what they said.