Is golf etiquette really about maintaining standards – or does it just make you feel good?

At the risk of being branded a loony liberal, I’m often conflicted about etiquette.

Personally, I couldn’t give a fig what you wear on the golf course. You want to play in jeans? Go for it. You’ll come a cropper in a shower, but it’s no business of mine what you choose to don while hitting a ball around a field.

If you leave that pitch mark unrepaired, though; if you can’t be bothered to rake a bunker; or if shouting fore as your ball arrows towards an unsuspecting player is too much of an effort, then you and I are going to fall out.

This puts me in a tight spot when – as happened on an episode of The NCG Golf Podcast – I’m challenged on my apparent inconsistencies.

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Etiquette’s problem isn’t the rules, it’s the way they are enforced

That’s because, for some of you, it’s all part of the same puzzle. Relax the dress codes and standards will slide.

To a point, I sympathise. Since Covid, it does feel like etiquette observance has changed. Whether that’s because of an attitude of ‘someone else can do it’, or simply a lack of education, I’m not sure.

Clubs can send as many emails as they like, but I get hundreds every day in my home mailbox and most of them never get opened.

While many of you don’t miss the old ‘membership application interview’ in any way, it did at least give both parties a chance to suss out whether there were gaps in someone’s understanding of on and off-course behaviour.

Now you can hand over your card details and get pointed towards the 1st tee.

I actually don’t think etiquette is controversial because of what it asks golfers to do. I think it sometimes suffers because of how it can be enforced.

There are ways and means of delivering a message. Humbly, I would suggest making a song and dance of it probably isn’t it.

What makes someone march across a fairway barking at a player to tuck their shirt in – or make a scene out of a cap being worn in a clubhouse?

Is that really about upholding standards of etiquette, or is it so they can march back to their friends, chest puffed out, and announce: “I told them”.

One thing I’ve learned from playing hundreds of golf courses across the UK is just how varied standards are from club to club. What is perfectly acceptable at one is forbidden at another.

That can be confusing.  

And given club websites are variable in quality to put it mildly, it’s not simply a case of saying ‘you should know the rules before you arrived’.

You often hear ‘their club, their rules’ when someone’s being hauled over the coals for not wearing the right clothing. While I accept clubs have the right to set their own customs, how those are delivered is crucial.

We’re living in a funny time where old norms are being challenged. Take golf hoodies. They’re now as common on courses as polo shirts, yet it’s only around five years ago a UK club copped worldwide headlines for reiterating a ban on them.

We’ve got a newer, post-Covid player who often has a very different view of what standards should look like. So etiquette perhaps isn’t necessarily declining, it’s just changing. So is the way it needs to be communicated.

A cap in the clubhouse doesn’t have to be a big deal if there’s an understanding that it isn’t a rule universally applied everywhere.

But when etiquette becomes about control, and when enforcing the rules is simply a vehicle for exercising authority, it falls down for me.

There are tangible benefits to repairing pitch marks, raking bunkers and replacing divots. It protects the course. There are tangible benefits to shouting fore, or not standing in someone’s shot line. It keeps people safe.

Where is the benefit in chewing someone out because their shorts have the wrong pocket on them, beyond the one-upmanship that comes with confrontation?

Is the enforcer really the saviour of etiquette, protecting standards that have stood for decades? Does their rebuke prove they’re a valued custodian of the club?

Or are they just being difficult, when a polite and measured request would have the same result? I think it’s real etiquette that makes the game better. Anything else is just theatre.

Now have your say

What do you think of this golf etiquette debate? Let us know by leaving a comment below or by getting in touch on X.

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