As we enter the weekend, the first two rounds of the 112th annual United States Open Golf Championship contested at San Francisco”s Olympic Club are in the record books. The 36-hole cut has been determined and now the eyes of the golfing world are on those 70 or so linksters who will play to the tournament”s conclusion on Sunday afternoon.
It was unique to see half of the field tee off on the first hole while the other half teed it up on the par-4 ninth hole. Historically, tour events start the field on alternate days off the first and 10th tees. However, in a very creative moment, the blue coats of the United States Golf Association went with 50 percent of the tournament field starting on the ninth hole because of its proximity to the clubhouse.
I recall the 2010 United States Open at Pebble Beach when tourney officials had to shuttle golfers, caddies, golf clubs, rules officials and even the sign boys out to the faraway 10th tee via vans. When these groups concluded their round on the ninth green some five hours later, the process repeated itself as they were then shuttled back to the clubhouse. Starting on the ninth tee at Olympic during these past two days was a smart, time-saving gesture.
Of course, it”s only been about 10 years since the USGA went away from its historic tee time system that had every one of the 156 golfers in the field starting their round on the first tee. Because of the methodical nature of present-day professional golf, or should I more accurately state that because of the sloth-like pace of modern-day tournament golf, it was becoming more and more difficult to get the entire field in the clubhouse before sunset.
This is a strange concept when you consider that the professionals play in threesomes. On top of that, they are really talented and take a whole lot fewer strokes during the course of play than the local hack at your local course who happens to follows up his triple-bogey with back-to-back snowmen. Most importantly, we”re at that time of year when the sun rises early and sets late. With the first tee time commencing at 7 a.m. and the final pairing teeing off some 510 minutes late (8 hours, 30 minutes) at 3:30 p.m., you would naturally assume that you could get the 156 best golfers in the world around the course before sunset occurs at 9 p.m. Yet such was not the case.
The problem came to a head at Bethpage Black in 2002 when slow play coupled with a brutal course set-up combined with rain delays made it a long day for the golfers. It was impossible to get the field through 18 holes by sunset. The course played long and wet with golfers finishing their Thursday round on Friday morning and then going right back out again, only to finish round two on Saturday. The same issue reared its ugly head in 2009, again at Bethpage Black, with Lucas Glover winning the National Open trophy after completing play on Monday morning.
The real issue in all this is slow play. As someone who can get around a regulation course in approximately three hours with relative ease, I”m continually annoyed by talented professional golfers who take five-plus hours to complete 18 holes. While I know I”m talking apples and oranges here when I mention completing a competitive round in the three-hour range, I am not trying to compare the U.S. Open with some casual round in which I zip around Adams Springs in record time. I have been in tournament fields at U.S. Amateur Qualifying and in the Northern Nevada Amateur with the entire field of threesomes clocking in at three hours. Or to put it in a more derisive way, any sport that John Daly can excel at means you don”t have to be an authority in quantitative analysis to hit a ball from 150 yards out while sitting in the middle of the fairway.
While there have always been golfers who have played at a slower than methodical pace, I see the problem getting worse in amateur tournament golf, junior golf and club golf. I contend that these golfing groups wrongly mimic the professionals they watch on television and then decide to retain the putting routine of Jim Furyk or the backswing histrionics of Kevin Na. I”m also of the belief that the whole slow play issue first came to the forefront when television viewers watched Jack Nicklaus in his heyday prowl the putting surfaces and then hover over his putts for what seemed like an eternity. Thousands of bogey golfers throughout America took on the pre-shot routine of Nicklaus or Fury or Na with little regard to what they were doing or why they were doing it. They see Glenn “All” Day circumnavigate the green, look at the putt from several different angles, finally pull the trigger on that 12-footer some two minutes later, and decided to parrot his routine. No wonder why Rory Sabbatini is going stark-raving mad while on tour.
I”m with Rory. Last weekend I played in a local tournament at Adams Springs on Cobb Mountain. The Adams members would normally be considered the slowest golf club organization on the planet if it weren”t for the fact that the Buckingham Tournament Players Club happens to be even slower. In a better-ball event at Adams that allowed golfers to pick up if their partner”s score was going to be used, my foursome teed off in the final pairing, spent most of the day in the back pocket of the foursome ahead of us, and completed by at a 5,600-yard course in just more than four hours and 40 minutes.
The following day I was in the first group off the tee and our foursome finished in three hours and 25 minutes. However, our group”s leadership skills were ignored as the group behind us was on the 15th hole when we completed our round and the group behind them was on the 13th hole as we putted out.
In the end, the U.S. Open will go on, and a winner will be declared, whether they play in four hours or five hours. However, slow play is killing the golf course business and amateur golfers are walking away from the game in record numbers because they don”t have six hours to commit to their every-Saturday-morning foursome, especially when their time on the links extends well into Saturday afternoon. It”s a good idea to want to play as well as the stars of the game. It”s not a good idea to do so as deliberately, or as slowly, as some of them do. This is not good for the future growth of the game.
