What’s the problem with changing your golf shoes in the car park?

I was thinking about opening my wallet – the poor moths needed releasing – while perusing the ‘visitor rules’ at a prospective golf club.

I’ve got a weird fascination with this. They manage to make me chuckle and choke at the same time.

At this establishment, there was a request to use the clubhouse rather than the car park to change into your shoes and the exhortation caught me a little off guard.

I’d honesty thought this wasn’t a thing anymore, particularly since the clubhouse temporarily became out of bounds during the Covid pandemic.

Now down an internet rabbit hole, I dove deeper and discovered there were others of the same mind. And they expressed it rather more forcefully too.

After spending far too much time clicking – damn those algorithms and their dopamine hit – it became clear several defences emerged to justify this act.

So let’s look at some of these golf shoe etiquette explanations and put them in their place. I change my shoes in the car park all the time. Tell me: what’s the problem?

Golf shoe etiquette: Why shouldn’t we change our shoes in the car park?

We want you to come into the clubhouse

Is this part of a cunning plan to get me to buy a post-round drink? It’s not that difficult a puzzle to solve is it? I mean, I’m not getting into Mensa for working it out.

Let’s be clear: If I fancy a drink after a round, it’s because I fancy a drink after that round.

I’m not such a slave to alcohol that the mere sight of a beer pump has a Pied Piper effect on me. It’s not compelling me to order a pint of whatever generic lager is being housed within it.

Atmosphere’s an under-rated factor too. Is the clubhouse lively or is it so dead an undertaker’s got a permanent office on the premises and is following some of the members around with a tape measure.

Either way, a compulsion to remove one set of shoes for another within those walls isn’t going to make me more likely to hang around.

It’s more comfortable in the golf locker room

Have you been in some visitors’ areas recently? They’d give me nightmares if I was claustrophobic.

Think about some of the away dressing rooms you’ve seen at football grounds. Pretty dingy, right? Now compress that into the size of a shoe box – barely big enough to hold the pair you’re looking to store – and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

If that’s what you call a comfortable welcome, you can forget it.

I was once in a tiny visitors’ locker room where the club were putting all the crap they couldn’t find any other place to store.

Old paintings, delivery pallets, they were piled high. Yeah, I feel valued now. Yet, I’m the one being chastised for poor etiquette for saying: ‘I don’t fancy that, I’ll just slip my Eccos on out here, thanks’.

You’re at risk of losing your property too. I don’t necessarily mean from thieves – though some might see a locker room as an easy target.

I’m so absent minded, I’ve left pairs of shoes at clubs as I’ve changed in the locker room, gone upstairs for a pint, and then headed to the car without remembering to dive back in and retrieve them.

When you change your soft spikes right by your boot, nothing’s left behind.

You’ll leave a mess in the car park

I’m not sure how this trumps people leaving the same mess in a locker room, but here’s a thought: just use the air gun first as you’re leaving the course?

Is it only shoes that make a mess? Don’t trolleys carry more muck around? Should we ‘change’ them in the clubhouse too?

I’ve no more desire to fill my motor with left-over grass clippings than leave them littering the car park. Tidy up after yourself as you come off the course and there’s no problem.

We’ve got to protect standards

Oh, that old chestnut. The car park is for parking, they say. It is not conduct becoming of our establishment.

Get over yourselves.

It’s a bit of tarmac, not Harrods. And if your golf course is any guide, you appear much more tolerant of unraked bunkers and unrepaired pitch marks. Priorities, people. Priorities.

Now have your say

What do you think of golf shoe etiquette? Does it matter where you slip on your golf shoes, or should Steve be locked in a golf locker room never to be let out? Let him know by leaving a comment on X or email him at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com

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