Slow play is one of those golfing bugaboos that can ruin a perfectly good day on the links. Lately, the issue of slow play has made its way into the pages of the game”s weekly and monthly publications. Slow play has always been around and yet a lot of tournament directors tend to turn a blind eye to the issue. In many ways, slow play is like sandbagging. Everyone knows it”s out there, everyone plays lip service to it, and pretty much everyone who is a slow player will adamantly deny that he or she is one.
From my weak perspective, I blame Jack Nicklaus. With the advent of television in the late 1950s into most American households, golf became a regular part of sports programming. The American fan base was enamored with the go-for-broke style of the game”s top player, Arnold Palmer. It also picked up on the ultra-deliberate style of Palmer”s chief adversary, Jack Nicklaus. In time, Nicklaus” golfing resume would surpass that of Palmer”s. Jack got more air time than any other golfer because he was atop more leader boards and it was apparent that he never hit a golf shot until he was ready. Suddenly, slow golfers had a new role model in Jack Nicklaus.
Every month Golf Digest publishes a column written by the Undercover Tour Pro. These anonymous articles usually focus on tour life, travel, courtesy cars, free tickets to ballgames, and the quality of tour-provided range balls. In the October edition, the Undercover Tour Pro contended that slow play is tantamount to cheating. He stated that “in a game of ethics, here”s a rule that”s broken all the time, and on purpose.”
Fans of the game know all about the tour”s slow players, whether it”s three-time major champion Padraig Harrington, who can turn a 150-yard shot from the middle of the fairway into a complex geometric and meteorological formula, to Kevin Na, who simply can”t pull the trigger when he gets the driving yips. None of this is by any measure worth watching, and for the three groups backed up on the par-3 16th hole while Glenn “All” Day, Ben Crane and Luke Gutherie are putting out, their frustrations could cost them money and exempt status. Lots of money.
Believe it or not, the PGA Tour, the Champions Tour, and the Web.com Tour have rigid pace of play policies in place. In theory. For instance, the pros at Silverado for the Frys Tournament received a two-page sheet with allotted times to play holes as well as scenarios regarding time. For instance, the 10 a.m. tee time needed to be on the seventh tee by 11:38 a.m. and they needed to get to the 16th tee by 2:02 p.m., all in a quest to get their threesome around in four hours and 40 minutes. Usually, Chinese teenagers at the Masters are the only ones penalized for slow play.
The tour gets very specific when it comes to individual strokes. Their basic rule of thumb is that a golfer in a PGA Tour event has 40 seconds to hit his shot. They give a little bit of wiggle room under certain circumstances. For instance, once your pairing gets to a par-3 hole, the first golfer up is given 60 seconds to play his shot while everyone else in the group gets 40 seconds. It makes sense to give the first golfer on a par-3 a little extra time to check the wind, the pin sheet and other crucial shotmaking elements. The rationale is that while the first golfer is perhaps taking up to 60 seconds to play his shot, the other members of the group are already going through the process of club selection and preparation.
In its Oct. 24 issue, Golfweek Magazine had a pace of play article entitled “To Speed Up College Golf, Follow the ANNIKA Model.” The ANNIKA Intercollegiate is an invitational golf tourney for a number of top-notch college programs held in mid-October in Florida. Right from the start, Golfweek states that most college golf rounds “drag past six hours” and quotes South Carolina coach Puggy Blackmon stating, “They”re going to play as slow as you let them, and as fast as you make them.” Alabama coach Mic Porter commented from the coach”s perspective, “Our livelihood depends on their executing, it doesn”t depend on their playing fast.”
The ANNIKA tournament directors brought in a team of seven rules officials from the American Junior Golf Association and spread them across the course every two to three holes. The end result was play that averaged four hours and 31 minutes. Duke coach Dan Brooks said, “Just the presence of the AJGA officials was a good thing for the field and its pace of play.”
Jack Lucich of Clearlake has been a rules official for close to 20 years. He works at NCGA and USGA amateur tourneys and professional qualifiers, PGA of America events such as the NorCal Open, the Pac-12 Tournament and NCAA Regionals, and Q School for the PGA Tour and the Web.com Tour. He also has served as the rules chairman for six North Coast Section boys” and girls” high school playoff tournaments during the past five years.
Because of its goal to include as many student-athletes as possible, the NCS Tournament of Champions usually has 144 golfers in its field, meaning a shotgun start with two foursomes on every hole. Last May at Peacock Gap in San Rafael, the entire 144 golfers in the TOC got around the course in five hours 15 minutes, almost a world record by junior golf standards. Lucich felt the adult presence throughout the course as well as adult forecaddies on holes with doglegs or blind shots or hazards greatly assisted pace of play issues. He also humorously contended that the “John Berry Glare” had a great impact upon slower groups picking up the pace.
In the end, slow play is forcing golfers to leave the game and is hurting the revenue stream of golf course facilities. For someone like myself with skin cancer issues, I find myself entering tournaments with a history of good pace of play and walking away from events that don”t always have a good handle on timely golf.
More often than not, extremely slow golfers spend too much time deciding what to do on the golf course. My response to them is quite simple. There”s not all that much depth needed to play golf on an intellectual level. After all, any game that John Daly can excel at means you don”t necessarily have to be smart. For the sake of the vast majority of us who play in a timely manner, the slow ones need to pick up the pace. I think you”re ruining the game for the rest of us. The Undercover Tour Pro happens to think that you”re cheating.
