My playing partner asked to ride in my cart. Could I have said no? | The Etiquetteist
A golfer hanging on to the back of a golf cart.

Offering a ride to a playing partner brings awkward scenarios into play.

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Dustin from Provo, Utah, writes:

I went out as a single in a cart the other day and got paired with a walker who, after a few holes, asked if he could ride with me instead. I didn’t really want him in the cart — I like riding solo, and I’d just met the guy — but I felt put on the spot so I said yes. What’s the etiquette around that kind of request, and would it have been okay for me to just say ‘no’?

Dear Dustin:

While picking up a passenger on the course isn’t quite as risky as stopping for a hitchhiker outside a prison, it is not without its perils. There’s always the chance you’ll wind up with an unsavory character in the shotgun seat.

The first questions the Etiquetteist would ask is whether the course you were playing charged a cart fee and whether your playing partner offered to chip in. If the answers are “yes” and “no,” respectively, then your unwanted passenger was out of line. He wanted the comfort and ease of a buggy without having to pay his fair share. While that’s understandable — who doesn’t like a freebie? — it doesn’t make it right. He should have at least offered to share the costs with you.

Stinginess aside, there’s also the strangeness of the timing. As most golfers know, it is not unheard of to start a round on foot only to have a change of heart when the weather shifts or fatigue sets in or the course turns out to be a real-estate monstrosity with mile-long hikes from one hole to the next. In those instances, which tend to occur late in rounds, it is perfectly acceptable to ask for a ride and usually in everyone’s best interest that the request be granted, whether because you’re trying to stay dry or chasing daylight or struggling the keep the pace.

But that was not the type of scenario you described. Your playing partner made an intimate request, early in the round, before you’d gotten a chance to know him, and he wasn’t especially polite about it. It was an awkward ask, and — to answer your Nancy Reagan question — you would have been well within your rights to say no, in as diplomatic a manner as you could muster.

And yet, because rejecting his ask would like have only added to the awkwardness, the Etiquetteist believes that you did the right thing in obliging him. It was the least painful option and, perhaps, a good reminder: Don’t stop for hitchhikers outside prisons, and, whenever possible, walk don’t ride.