Time for another look at slow play?

[Kenny B]

OK, all the fast players don't like playing with slow players.  It affects the fast player's rhythm and they have to adjust to the pace of play.  Unfair.  They complain after the round or the tournament.  The Tour is reluctant to do anything... obviously.  So players are starting to call the slow players out.

If fast players are taken out of their comfort zone, then the fast players need to do the same to the slow players while the round is underway.  Forget about complaining after the round.  Complain to the player at every opportunity. 

"Hey, pick up the pace."
"That shot took 2 minutes to play."
"It's time to start your routine."

It's probably not a good way to win friends, but it might influence people.

A thought...   I know that slow players take too much time assessing and analyzing and that has become part of their routine.  But I wonder if some slow play is intentional gamesmanship when they know they are playing with a fast player that is at or near the top of every leaderboard.  It has been used in the past; I bet it still is.

[bmaru99]

24 minutes ago, Kenny B said:

OK, all the fast players don't like playing with slow players.  It affects the fast player's rhythm and they have to adjust to the pace of play.  Unfair.  They complain after the round or the tournament.  The Tour is reluctant to do anything... obviously.  So players are starting to call the slow players out.

If fast players are taken out of their comfort zone, then the fast players need to do the same to the slow players while the round is underway.  Forget about complaining after the round.  Complain to the player at every opportunity. 

"Hey, pick up the pace."
"That shot took 2 minutes to play."
"It's time to start your routine."

It's probably not a good way to win friends, but it might influence people.

A thought...   I know that slow players take too much time assessing and analyzing and that has become part of their routine.  But I wonder if some slow play is intentional gamesmanship when they know they are playing with a fast player that is at or near the top of every leaderboard.  It has been used in the past; I bet it still is.

I am all in favour of speeding up pace of play as I am also a very fast player, however, Justin Rose made a great point and I am paraphrasing but he questioned How much time is it really going to speed up a round. If a group saves 20 minutes is it really that beneficial to the game. Just some food for the brain in my opinion as it is a very fair point.

[Kanoito]

25 minutes ago, bmaru99 said:

I am all in favour of speeding up pace of play as I am also a very fast player, however, Justin Rose made a great point and I am paraphrasing but he questioned How much time is it really going to speed up a round. If a group saves 20 minutes is it really that beneficial to the game. Just some food for the brain in my opinion as it is a very fair point.

My usual 3-3.5 hour round vs 5 hours plus... makes a big difference to me.

[bmaru99]

1 minute ago, Kanoito said:

My usual 3-3.5 hour round vs 5 hours plus... makes a big difference to me.

Pro players are much different. I am not comparing to municipal golfers as I also play very quickly. I am strictly talking PGA Pros.

[cksurfdude]

30 minutes ago, bmaru99 said:

I am all in favour of speeding up pace of play as I am also a very fast player, however, Justin Rose made a great point and I am paraphrasing but he questioned How much time is it really going to speed up a round. If a group saves 20 minutes is it really that beneficial to the game. Just some food for the brain in my opinion as it is a very fair point.

Respectfully disagree: the "slow time" added is not 1 minute per hole; let's take a more egregious example of 10 minutes per hole - that adds 180 minutes, ie. 3 hours, to a round of golf.

An extra 5 minutes, on average, per hole adds 90 minutes. Just saying....

[bmaru99]

6 minutes ago, cksurfdude said:

Respectfully disagree: the "slow time" added is not 1 minute per hole; let's take a more egregious example of 10 minutes per hole - that adds 180 minutes, ie. 3 hours, to a round of golf.

An extra 5 minutes, on average, per hole adds 90 minutes. Just saying....

Again. it wasnt my point i just read it and in a sense, agreed. Your point that you made is extremely fair as well. But lets take it a step further now. What if we stop looking at the time it takes once you approach your ball but rather look at the total time is takes for you to walk up to your ball, hit the ball, putt, finish the hole. When we start to broaden the things that are being timed is when we will notice the main variances. If you listened to the podcast Fore Play, Bryson explains that he walks to his ball faster than anyone and once he gets to his ball he is forced to wait there because it isnt a hit and go environment (I understand he could be prepared to hit by going over yardages while others are hitting etc but this is just an example). He also explains how he is a top 20 driver of the ball and often times is ahead of everyone and is the on waiting to play out his shot.In Brysons defense too he doesn't take long on approach shots but rather on putting greens because thats where he struggles. In my opinion, there is just so much more to look at rather than just your standard 40 second rule once you get to your ball since players can be walking o their ball slower, but hitting the ball in 30 seconds. One recommendation I could have is have an average of 40 seconds per total shot so if you are not as strong in one particular area, you may have a little more time for those specific instances granted you are faster than 40 seconds on other shots. Sa, you go over the average  times per 18 holes, you are awarded a stroke no questions asked.

Sorry for ranting just brainstorming i guess. And b the way just look for opinions, I am by no means arguing just want to see what others think. I welcome any criticism and or thoughts

[RickyBobby_PR]

Even if the tour fixes the perceived pace of play issue it’s not going to make weekend rounds at public courses any faster.

the ones who are mimicking tour pros arent going to change their routines.  There are slow golfers who are just slow and never learned proper etiquette or how to play ready golf. That’s not going to change if Bryson gets penalized a stroke for slow play every week and changes his pace of play.

Courses are as much at fault for pace of play issues as slow golfers. I play a couple courses regularly that aren’t easy and I have never had a pace of play problem at those courses during rounds where every tee time was booked . They have a stated pace of play policy, stated penalties for falling behind and a staff that knows how to determine where the issue is and how to properly enforce it. I played a round on Saturday at a course that is only 9 holes now and is relatively short and golfer friendly. It took over 4.5 hours and the issue was two groups in front of us were slow. They had two holes open in front of them. The course has no stated pace of play policy and no staff out there watching or speeding things up. The staff they do have is clueless when it comes to golf and pace of play issues and most only work there for the free golf.

[Kenny B]

Most of the extra time when playing a hole is when the player gets closer to the hole.  They know what they are going to hit off a tee on par 4's and 5's.  Par 3's may vary a little depending on weather conditions.  However, when a player gets closer to the green, play slows down.  What distance to cover, what club will go too far, what shot shape, where can I miss??  Players walk up to the green when they get within 70 yards to take a look.  Generally, the more mechanical the player, the slower.  Feel players are better at trusting their swing and preparations and are generally faster.

Then they get to the green.  The more the undulations and the faster the speed of greens, the slower they play.  Consequences of misreading the break combined with getting the speed wrong can be extreme.  Over the years the pace has slowed because the greens are faster.  

Personally, I'm for getting rid of greens books.  The art of green reading should be a part of the game of golf.  While I mark my ball with a line (actually a T) and line up the ball when I putt, I believe that once you place the ball on the green and remove your hand from the ball, the ball is "in play" and should not be touched again, unless the ball has to be remarked according to rules.  Multiple aligning of the ball should not be allowed.

[cksurfdude]

4 hours ago, bmaru99 said:

Again. it wasnt my point i just read it and in a sense, agreed.

Yes, cool, got it you were posting other viewpoints. Just the way I see it, it's _not_ +20 minutes per round for public golf .. where the rest of us mortals play. So as much as I admire and respect Justin Rose, I disagree with his assessment ... primarily because he and the other pros absolutely DO influence the way the public plays.....

And agree with the total time concept - if a rule were to say something like 'once the player is at the ball' ... you just know that some guys are gonna .. (ha ha) game .. the system to not actually be at their ball until they're good and ready.......

 

3 hours ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

Even if the tour fixes the perceived pace of play issue it’s not going to make weekend rounds at public courses any faster.

Maybe. Maybe not? If (big if) all the pros did play with a bit more alacrity AND there were PSAs / a public service campaign on TV and on the GC to the effect of "Play Like the Pros Play" ... then possibly there could be a trickle down effect to there general golfing population..?

[RickyBobby_PR]

1 hour ago, cksurfdude said:

Yes, cool, got it you were posting other viewpoints. Just the way I see it, it's _not_ +20 minutes per round for public golf .. where the rest of us mortals play. So as much as I admire and respect Justin Rose, I disagree with his assessment ... primarily because he and the other pros absolutely DO influence the way the public plays.....

And agree with the total time concept - if a rule were to say something like 'once the player is at the ball' ... you just know that some guys are gonna .. (ha ha) game .. the system to not actually be at their ball until they're good and ready.......

 

Maybe. Maybe not? If (big if) all the pros did play with a bit more alacrity AND there were PSAs / a public service campaign on TV and on the GC to the effect of "Play Like the Pros Play" ... then possibly there could be a trickle down effect to there general golfing population..?

There were PSAs and campaign for tee it forward and that hasn’t made more amateurs move up, not to mention when was the last time a tee it forward add was shown?

theres a lot of amateurs who are slow that don’t emulate anything the pros do. 

[bens197]

theres a lot of amateurs who are slow that don’t emulate anything the pros do. 

And it usually just falls back to this...

“Those who don’t know, don’t know that they don’t know”

[RickyBobby_PR]

2 hours ago, bens197 said:

 

And it usually just falls back to this...

“Those who don’t know, don’t know that they don’t know”

 

Yep and it goes for all handicap levels 

[revkev]

Interesting enough read. I just started a thread about noticing a trend that pace of play has improved dramatically at the public courses that I regularly play.

The round last Saturday which was for our league championship last a whopping 4:05. I don’t recall the last round that I played that lasted more than 415.

Courses around here are really making it an emphasis - most rounds, even on a crowded course, are coming in under 4 hours.

I will be interested to see what the winter brings


Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

[cksurfdude]

13 hours ago, revkev said:

The round last Saturday which was for our league championship last a whopping 4:05.

Nice! Wish the course I'd played on recently .. starting well after the last group in a local outing .. did the same; our round got slower and sloower and sloooowwer.... The front 9 took us 2 hours - the back 9 a little over 3....

[cksurfdude]

Here's a copy of an article that appeared in the NY Times...

-----

Golf’s New Breed Tries to Speed Things Up

PGA Tour executives have long resisted singling out anyone for taking a long time to hit a shot. So some of the top young players are applying peer pressure.

By Karen Crouse

Aug. 15, 2019

MEDINAH, Ill. — A pace-of-play problem that has simmered for decades on the PGA Tour reached full boil in 2 minutes 20 seconds, the time it took Bryson DeChambeau to execute an eight-foot putt last week.

A video of that stroke, and another of DeChambeau laboring even longer over a 70-yard approach, went viral. And then some of his playing peers, led by the world No. 1, Brooks Koepka, sounded off.

Koepka corralled DeChambeau on the practice green for a quick conversation about slow play. A day later, DeChambeau vowed to speed up. “I’m committed to being part of the solution, not the problem,” he wrote Monday on his Instagram account.

Along with Koepka, stars like Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas have taken on the issue of slow play, ignoring PGA Tour etiquette that has traditionally silenced complaints and accommodated the offenders.

For too long, the tour has protected golfers who possess neither the discipline nor the decorum — two so-called tenets of the game — to hit shots in a timely manner. The tour’s pace-of-play rule focuses on golfers whose groups have fallen out of position, not on individuals who dawdle.

DeChambeau, 25, was in diapers the last time the tour’s pace-of-play policy was enforced at an individual stroke play event. Five players in the 69-man field at this week’s BMW Championship hadn’t been born when Glen Day was penalized a stroke for slow play in the third round of the 1995 Honda Classic.

But in the last week, the young stars of the men’s tour showed that if the executives who run the sport will not fix the problem, they will — if only by shaming the guilty parties.

When Koepka was paired with a slow player, J.B. Holmes, at the British Open last month, he pointed at an imaginary watch — a gesture directed toward the rules officials. He was silently imploring them to do their job and hold Holmes accountable.

“I mean, I take 15 seconds and go, and I’ve done all right,” Koepka, a four-time major winner, said this week ahead of the BMW Championship at Medinah Country Club.

DeChambeau, a physics wonk, has cultivated an image as the game’s mad scientist. Long perceived by his peers as notoriously deliberate, he gained wider notice Friday when his snail’s pace caused a firestorm on social media, from fans as well as other members of the tour.

The players’ comments represented a stark departure from the days of Deane Beman, the tour commissioner from 1974 to 1994. In that era tour members trashed their pokey brethren privately, but toed the party line publicly by declaring that everything was fine.

This new breed, led by Koepka, 29, and McIlroy, 30, won’t be silent. McIlroy challenged the tour to get tough on slow players by issuing a warning followed by a stroke penalty.

“That will stamp it out right away,” he said, adding, “We are not children that need to be told five or six times what to do.”

McIlroy, a former world No. 1 from Northern Ireland, spoke up before last weekend’s tournament at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City. After the third round, Koepka was asked how he would have reacted if he had been in DeChambeau’s threesome.

Koepka said he would have told him to hurry up, using an expletive for emphasis.

Koepka’s first love was baseball, a sport in which players occasionally jaw at each other, and he saw no reason to change his approach once he switched games.

“I bring more of a true athlete’s mentality to golf than the typical golfer,” he said. “That’s why I can rub a lot of people the wrong way. But I don’t care.”

A little confrontation never hurts, Koepka said. “Sometimes,” he added, “it helps you figure out what the root of the problem is and start working on it.”

Other sports, including baseball, cricket and tennis, have introduced measures to speed up play. Golf — with its five-and-a-half-hour rounds for pros, its dress codes for children and its private clubs that exclude women — can seem to be almost willfully lagging behind the times.

“Until television and sponsors aren’t interested, then slow play is just part of the game,” said Adam Scott, the former world No. 1 from Australia.

In a funny twist, the tour playoffs, now underway, are sponsored by FedEx, a business predicated on speediness.

Tyler Dennis, the PGA Tour’s chief of operations, said the tour is reviewing its slow-play policy to determine whether the rules should include players who take an inordinate amount of time to hit a shot.

“It’s a very important issue and we hear the players’ position,” he said.

Phil Mickelson said he remained skeptical that anything would change. “It’s been a topic of discussion since I came out on tour,” said Mickelson, who turned pro in 1992. “I think we just need to quit complaining and deal with the fact that it is what it is.”

Slow play has been a pox on the pro game since long before Mickelson, 49, arrived on the scene. During the 1949 United States Open at Medinah, the slack pace exasperated officials, according to “Miracle at Merion,” a 2010 book by David Barrett. For the 1950 tournament, held at Merion, a note was posted in the locker room imploring players to speed up, Barrett wrote.

The first threesome in 1947 finished in 3 hours 27 minutes and the last in 4:16, the book said, prompting Joe Dey, the United States Golf Association executive director, to grouse, “This is murder on spectators as well as players who wish to play at a reasonable speed.”

Players are not always entirely at fault. Slick greens combined with swirling winds can be a recipe for trouble, said Holmes, who explained, “The harder you make these golf courses, you have to put more thought into it.”

Playing alongside Tiger Woods, who attracts large, boisterous crowds that are hard to corral and harder to hush, can be especially tough. “You’re going to go slower because there’s extra stuff going on,” said Jordan Spieth, a three-time major winner and former world No. 1, who is often a target of criticism.

But players have control over their pre-shot routines, some of which have crossed into compulsions.

“It seems now that there are so many sports psychologists and everybody telling everybody that they can’t hit it until they are ready, that you have to fully process everything,” Koepka said.

Then there are the detailed yardage and greens books, which have turned even the sternest tests of golf into what Scott, the 2013 Masters champion, described as an open-book exam.

“There’s so much information we’re given, it’s no wonder it takes so long,” Scott said, adding, “I don’t see why people aren’t suspended.”

In an article in the June issue of Golf Digest, Slugger White, the tour’s vice president of rules and competitions, explained why he is loath to assess penalty strokes for slow play. Imagine someone taking two seconds more than his allotted time and being slapped with a one-stroke penalty, he said.

“Say the penalty cost him $5,000,” White said. “Suddenly he’s so far down the FedEx Cup point list he doesn’t have a place to play the following year, which in turn might mean his kid can’t go to college or he can’t put a down payment on that decent house.”

White added: “I’m all for looking at fine structures, maybe increasing them. But determining his fate with a stopwatch to me is a little harsh.”

It would not be the only harsh golf rule. Roberto DeVicenzo missed out on a championship playoff at the 1968 Masters for signing a scorecard for a 66, one shot higher than his actual score, which would have sent him into a playoff with Bob Goalby.

“Look, we’re trying this off-the-wall FedEx Cup,” Thomas, a former world No. 1, said, referring to the revamped scoring system for the Tour Championship, where the 30-man field will feature a staggered, handicapped start. “Why can’t we try something for slow play? Even if it’s putting names up in the locker room of the 10 slowest players. I’m sure they’re going to want to play faster to not have their names on the wall.”

Thomas may be on to something. Spieth, who was fined for slow play during his five-win season in 2015, said he had made a conscious effort to speed up.

Why? “It’s no fun,” Spieth said, “being that guy that other people get the pairing with you and go, ‘Oh, no.’”

 

Correction: Aug. 15, 2019

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of players in the BMW Championship who hadn’t been born when Glen Day was penalized a stroke for slow play in 1995. It is five, not three.

Karen Crouse is a sports reporter who joined the Times in 2005. She started her newspaper career at the Savannah News-Press as the first woman in the sports department. Her first book, "Norwich," was published in January, 2018.  @bykaren
-----

[revkev]

I can’t believe there hasn’t been a single slow play penalty enforced on tour since the 90’s. Yikes


Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

[perseveringgolfer]

8 minutes ago, revkev said:

I can’t believe there hasn’t been a single slow play penalty enforced on tour since the 90’s. Yikes


Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

wasnt there a young Asian player penalised a stroke for slow play at the Masters in the last few years? I need to Google it but I think they penalised him yet the elite were getting away with it.

[cksurfdude]

Just now, perseveringgolfer said:

wasnt there a young Asian player penalised a stroke for slow play at the Masters in the last few years? I need to Google it but I think they penalised him yet the elite were getting away with it.

Yes, I recall that also - young kid and an amateur.

[RickyBobby_PR]

26 minutes ago, revkev said:

I can’t believe there hasn’t been a single slow play penalty enforced on tour since the 90’s. Yikes


Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

Pros know how to game the system. Speed up after warning to get back on pace and then slow down again...rinse and repeat if necessary 

[RickyBobby_PR]

17 minutes ago, perseveringgolfer said:

wasnt there a young Asian player penalised a stroke for slow play at the Masters in the last few years? I need to Google it but I think they penalised him yet the elite were getting away with it.

It’s about knowing the rules. Has the amateur picked up the pace and got back on the right time nothing would have happened. Since player and/or caddie didn’t bother the warning turned into a penalty.

it wasn’t pick on the amateur and don’t mess wit the pros..it was the amateurs fault