A 6-hour round is the single most common complaint you'll hear after a charity golf outing, and it's usually not because the course was busy. It's because nobody set up the day to move, and nobody enforced it once it started.

Pick a Format That's Built for Speed

Format is the single biggest lever you control, and it's decided months before anyone tees off. A scramble, where all four players hit from the best shot each time, is the fastest format available because it eliminates the lost-ball hunts and recovery shots that eat up a round.

PGA.com's comparison of best ball and scramble confirms the pattern organizers already know from experience: scramble is faster and more social, while best ball is slower because every player has to play out their own ball, bad drives included.

If your crowd wants more individual credit for their shots, a shamble (everyone plays their own ball after a single best drive) is a reasonable middle ground. Just know you're trading some speed for that competitive feel, and plan your schedule buffer accordingly.

Cap the Score, and Put It Where Golfers Can't Miss It

Enforcing a double-bogey max, or a hard two-putt cap on the green, keeps a rough hole from turning into a ten-minute ordeal. The mistake most organizers make isn't choosing the rule, it's where they put it: buried in a rules sheet nobody reads past the registration table.

Print the score cap directly on the scorecard next to the scoring boxes, and post a small sign at each tee box restating it. A rule that's visible in the moment gets followed; a rule that's only in the packet gets forgotten by the third hole, when it matters most.

The Verandah Golf Club's guide to running a scramble makes the same point about mulligans: limiting them to specific holes only works if players are reminded where those holes are, not just told once at check-in.

Nudge, Don't Shame

Course marshals matter, but how they talk to golfers matters just as much as whether they show up. A marshal who tells a group they're "holding up the whole course" creates resentment; a marshal who says something like "we're trying to get everyone back for an early happy hour, mind picking up the pace a bit?" gets a much better response, because it frames the ask as a shared goal instead of a scolding.

Some organizers go a step further and turn pace into a small reward instead of a warning. Offer bonus raffle tickets or first-in-line priority at the food station to groups that finish within their window, and you'll find golfers start policing their own pace without a marshal saying a word.

Keep Contests and Pro Stations Off Your Bottleneck Holes

A closest-to-the-pin contest with a pro, or a "pay to take a mulligan shot" station, adds real time to a hole: cash changes hands, the pro explains the setup, and golfers stop to watch. That's a fine trade-off on a hole that already moves fast, and a costly one on a hole that's already your natural bottleneck.

Before you finalize contest placement, cross-reference it against whichever holes you and the head pro have already flagged as slow (long par 3s, reachable par 5s, forced carries). Stacking a transactional pause onto an already-slow hole is how a 5-hour round quietly becomes a 6-hour one, one hole at a time.

Say the Target Out Loud

Golfers pace themselves against whatever expectation they're given, so give them one. Announce a real landmark at the morning meeting, something like "we're aiming to have everyone in for lunch by 1:00," rather than leaving pace as an unspoken hope.

Then actually track it. Have your starter log each group's tee time and check times at the turn, so you know by early afternoon whether you're on pace or heading for a 6-hour day while you can still do something about it.

Guessing at where the day went long after the fact means you're solving the same problem again next year instead of fixing it this year.