On the Path Between Tees

You know that closely mown pathway that connects the rear tee boxes to the front tee boxes, or the teeing grounds to the fairway, at some courses? What's that called, anyway?

That was the question that came from a reader a few days ago. I didn't know the answer, so I checked with the folks who surely would: the Golf Course Superintendents Assocation of America.

They did know the answer, and the answer is this: it doesn't have any kind of special name. It's usually just called, even by superintendents, the "walkway" or "pathway." Hey, not every question has an interesting answer!

But when Jeff Bollig, communications director for the GCSAA, looked into it for me, he did come up with an interesting story about the possible origins of the walkway, one involving Ben Hogan.

One superintendent Jeff checked with told him the pathway "dates back to Ben Hogan, who asked the superintendent to mow the path for him. Hogan essentially told the superintendent that he never hit into the rough, so he was never going to walk through it."

Sounds plausible, given Hogan's reputation. But it turns out the origin of the closely mown pathway is more mundane than that. Here's the real story, told to Jeff by one of the longest-serving superintendents in the GCSAA:

"In the days before hydraulics, superintendents would mow a tee box and then before progressing to the next one (or to the fairway), would have to take the mower out of gear, get off the mower, manually lift the cutting deck and then get back on the mower and proceed. As you might expect, this took time and slowed down the process. Superintendents then decided to just mow the strip rather than lifting the deck. It became a more efficient process for superintendents and the by-product was that golfers did not have to walk through the tall rough. He remembers this from just prior to the 1950s as his father did this at his course."

Now you know. Thanks to Jeff Bollig and the GCSAA for their assistance.