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When I play golf locally, it’s usually at a nearby Los Angeles County municipal park course in Griffith Park. What ought to be a pleasant walk among the tress and birds often feels like a death march through rush hour traffic. Four-hour rounds morph into six-hour trudges, and the joy of chasing a little white ball through a sylvan paradise is lost while you stare at the backs of duffers standing around with their hands on their hips.

The abysmal slowness isn’t necessarily because the players are bad, although wayward shots and a general lack of readiness exacerbate the situation. It’s not, as some racist observers have suggested to me, because many of the early morning tee-times are taken by Koreans, who allegedly have no awareness of golf course etiquette. And it’s not because the average hacker studies every putt from four different angles, as though he were playing on the PGA Tour.

The reason most rounds commencing after 9AM on our local tracks take so long is because the golf courses have too many players on them.

The County, hungry for cash, wants to grind as many players through the mill as possible. Instead of sending groups of four…