CADDIE'S ROLE:The pace of play is the scourge of the modern game for professional and amateur alike, writes COLIN BYRNE

I WAS back home last week for what felt almost like the start of the summer: clear skies, just a few showers and a temperature you wouldn’t really confuse with winter. It was perfect weather to play golf by the seaside on a course that was as inviting as a links gets at the end of spring time, relatively fast and true greens, manicured fairways and a minimal amount of rough, which makes golf an inviting challenge.

At this stage of economic decline and at the end of the era of massive course development in our country, it is a great time for golfers to get deals on the course of their choice through both society outings and a simple pay-and-play basis. In fact it is both a time to consider joining a club due to competitive offers or keeping your options open by electing to freewheel around the litany of courses in the country that have fallen foul of the downturn and are desperate to attract all comers to their upgraded facilities.

I was kind of a victim of this latter type of golfer whom I got stuck behind at my club last week. On the type of day I felt privileged to be a member of a private links club, I found myself on the cluttered first tee with four fourballs of visitors lined up in front of me.

Modern golf can be a nightmare due to an accumulation of factors which means it often takes five hours or more to complete a round of golf.

I played with some friends earlier in the week who reminded me of the summers they used to spend as teenagers playing at least 36 holes a day and around mid-summer often fitting in 54 holes in the long days of swift, simple but invigorating ready, steady golf. It is how most young golfers used to hone the finer points of the game during one of their daily multiple rounds of golf.

Most courses 30 years ago didn’t have driving ranges and course congestion didn’t seem to be such a problem as it is today.

Today this is an unimaginable and unattainable dream to play so many holes in one day.

Given the massive increase of supply of new courses and the abundance of ranges, despite the increase in number of people playing the game in the past 20 years there is something unfathomable about the amount of time it takes to play a round.

I had plenty of time to contemplate this scourge of the modern game as I waited for five minutes before I played each shot, apart from around the greens.

As it happened, one of my partners was going really well in the competition and our third had a commitment scheduled for five hours after we teed off (a reasonable timescale we thought), which meant he had to abandon his round after 14 holes.

I was quite happy to go on with my other playing partner despite having lost the will to ever play the game again due to the laborious nature of the round in which I was plugged.

I don’t play that often, but I can now understand how, much like living with impassable traffic jams, you either accept it or get a bike.

Today’s golfer seems to fall into the slog that is the modern pace of play and accept it as the way it is. For seasoned golfers it is unusual that we should have such short memories about the three-hour threeball rounds of golf in the recent past.

It seems like it was a different game where less is more.

I understand there have been great advances in technology and technique in the past few decades, from the quality of the ball, clubs, shafts and shoes to the physical prowess of the players and the expertise of their coaches. Many players have battery-driven trolleys or lighter, better weight-dispersed bags. So why does it make them even slower?

There is no doubt the advent of weekly televised golf has not been entirely co-incidental in those less gifted amateur observers aping the extremely talented and deliberate professionals by bringing their precise ways with them out on to their local track.

The mistaken thinking here, of course, is that the more they contemplate the swing the better it will become. Whereas, of course, the less most of us less talented amateurs think the better chance we have of letting our limited natural ability take over and result in a respectable if not perfect golf shot.

Having seen the game develop from the talented but lazy, no-practice norm for professionals of the late eighties to the talented, technical and extremely diligent, a la Vijay Singh method (who of course has an awful lot to answer for when it comes to equating success with hard, laborious graft), I have come to the conclusion that less is indeed more and not the other way around.

The modern professional is extremely influenced by the modern coach. What they often forget is just how naturally talented they are, they are largely automatic golfing machines. The danger and the resultant slow play that ensues comes from paralysis by analysis.

Coaches are good for us all but not if it means we take five hours to play 18 holes in groups of three on a calm day, with little rough off medium length tees.

Hit the ball, please, now, there’s someone waiting to hit behind you.

I don’t want to finish my round and feel the need to ask an outsider what day it is, such is the disconnection from reality you feel from a hopelessly long round of golf.