Carts, or buggies, may be more prevalent in certain parts of the world than others, and yes, many golfers will have played a course somewhere where they were eternally grateful for the cart – perhaps in a humid climate, over particularly hilly terrain or on a course layout featuring long treks between greens and tees.
But while the cart may sometimes be more or less essential (even compulsory at some courses), by and large, we reckon you’ll play better golf without using a cart for the following five reasons…
Fitness
For plenty of golfers, golf is their only real exercise so take away the walking element and you’re taking away their main avenue of exercise. Walking has been shown to be good for both physical and mental health.
Clearly, it would be hard to quantify any benefit on a round-by-round basis, but we believe that the more you walk (a typical round will cover about five to seven miles) the fitter you will become over time, and the fitter you become, the more chance you will have or playing better golf more often.
Stay looser
On a related theme, walking will help you stay looser for longer (especially among older golfers and those with dodgy backs) than if you’re constantly sitting back down with your lower back and legs at a 90˚ angle for every buggy ride between shots, particularly on cold days.
Keep the blood pumping as you walk, and you’ll stay looser for longer and give yourself a better chance of playing your best golf right to the end of the round.
As nature intended
Walking is how golf was intended to be played, and obviously how it had to be played in its more formative years. Not only do you get to feel the ground beneath your feet and immerse yourself in your surroundings more, but it also gives you more time to think things through mentally, especially after a bad shot.
In a cart, you’re typically rushing to your ball and then playing again before you’ve really cleared your mind properly and had time to process what just happened. The extra breathing space between shots that walking allows could just help you to avoid compounding error with error when something has just gone a bit wrong.
The direct route
If you’re walking, you can go pretty much wherever you want, taking the most direct route from A to B and thus always having your clubs right there where you need them, especially if you’re carrying.
Any little frustrations can undoubtedly hamper performance and if you’re constantly having to wander from cart path to ball to inspect the lie before going back to choose a club, you are adding a layer of pre-shot hassle that wouldn’t be there if you were walking (especially if you then change your mind on closer inspection of the lie and have to repeat the journey!).
Such frustrations can lead to you hurrying… and hurrying or rushing in golf rarely have good consequences for your game.
Right club more often
Taking this theme a little further, you’ll play better when walking because you’ll hit the right club more often. Why? Well, when ‘stick to the cart path’ rules are in force, you will inevitably face times when your ball is lying about as far from the cart path as humanly possible. In such circumstances, most golfers will take two or three clubs for what could be nearly a 100-yard walk to their ball.
But when they get there, they may find that none of them is the right club for the shot in hand because of the lie, the line or the shot they really need to play.
A great many golfers would then make the decision that they can’t be bothered to trek all the way back to the cart so try to improvise with what they have to hand and make a complete hash of it, leading to higher scores than they would have made with their full bag of clubs right by their side.
