Riding a cart is NOT faster than walking. Walking with a partner at a local course, we recently finished in two and a half hours.  And when walking a few days later with two guys in a cart, it was me waiting on them, not the other way around.

Every serious golfer knows that, for healthy people, walking is faster than riding. You take your shot and walk directly to your ball, and everyone else is doing the same. It’s a continuous flow. In a cart, you drive to your partner’s ball and wait while he hits, and then drive to your ball and he waits while you hit.

But shop pros and managers insist on perpetrating the lie that carts are faster. It has nothing to do with carts, though. It’s all about making some extra money.

The biggest evidence for this has always been the “mandatory carts” courses that will let you walk—IF you pay for the cart anyway.

Long Island Newsday reports latest course to fall victim to the “carts are faster than walking lie” is the Eisenhower Red on Long Island. Now I’ve never traveled to Long Island, and likely never will. But there was something in the article that caught my eye—the tacit admission that carts are about boosting revenues, not speeding play.

“County officials say making cart use mandatory will speed play—though some golfers disagree—and raise $100,000 to $150,000 in revenues.”

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it. Courses got rid of caddies because they ultimately were an expense. And they added carts as a revenue enhancer. I’d love to know what the profit margin is on a golf cart.