Colin Montgomerie recently expressed his bewilderment as to why tour golfers, those who are considered the best in the world at their craft, were these days taking five hours or more to play a round of tournament golf.
Then after watching Ryan Fox win the Open Championship, doing so at pace, a discussion on twitter suggested the PGA Tour maybe pairs some of the faster players such as Fox and Ludvig Aberg in the first group. If those in the groups following fall more than one hole behind, it’s a two shot slow play penalty. In theory, if Fox, Aberg and whoever their third might be, play in under four hours, the field has to keep up.
Perhaps its seems to be an extreme measure, however maybe fixing the epidemic of slow play in tournament golf needs a left field solution.
And no doubt what club and social golfers, youngsters and leading amateurs see when they watch the major events on their TV screens, translates to their pace of play and how they conduct themselves on the course.
We put it to our esteemed panel.
Is pace of play in tournament golf a major issue? If so, how do we fix it?
By Michael Court
SHORT answer! . . . you can’t.
Every golfer has their own mannerisms, pre-shot routine of whatever and nothing will change them.
Golf is a selfish game to start with. Just ask my ex-wife, she’ll tell you that.
I actually play golf too quickly, if anything, and if you want to beat me at matchplay, then all you have to do is slow me down so that, not too dis-similar to Ryan Fox, I have too much time to think about it.
And the more time I have to think about all the things I can do wrong, then you can guarantee that will happen when I eventually do get to play my shot.
You watch guys like Patrick Cantlay, (ranked in the top 40 in the world rankings), and you can call him anything you want, except fast, and nothing will change that.
It takes one player, one slow, deliberate, selfish player to slow down the whole field for the rest of the day.
Sure, you can fine them, suspend them, give them a rocket and they may hurry up for a week or two before slowly (sic), sinking back to their previous levels of tardiness.
The best players in the world are no different. Ask them to hurry and they invariably hit a few poor shots and blame it on the officials for hurrying them along.
The truth is a lot more fines and stricter policing of the pace of play should be done but at the end of the day the top players, like us, are outside, doing what they love, and probably don’t really want to rush inside and start whinging about that missed putt on eight until everyone has had their day in the sun.
And anyone who disagrees with me is obviously not spending enough time on the golf course to see for themselves how the rest of the world plays golf.
My last round of golf took four hours and 21 minutes and frankly I can live with that.
By Andrew Crockett
I often cite Peter Thomson in this discussion, as it still bewilders me that in 1952 Norman Von Nida made an official complaint to the R&A about slow play at The Open Championship as Bobby Locke (the winner) had taken far too long in the final 18 holes. How long did he take? In a major? Three hours and 20 minutes.
You can read about that on the Inside Golf website, an ‘Open Discussion’ that I had with Peter Thomson back in 2015. Honestly, his words still circle in my mind. I cannot quite understand what happened that has made golf take two hours longer than it once did. Two and a half hours, as a pair was not unusual in Victoria in the 1950s.
Not sure that sending out two fast players (Eg Ryan Fox and Ludvig Aberg) at the start of play and telling the other professionals they have to keep up or else suffer a two stroke penalty would be ideal, but it would surely create a sense of concern in the field that the authorities are focused on slow play.
Perhaps a better strategy would be to say to the first group out that they need to be finished in 4 hours, 30 minutes and to time each group thereafter and issue a two stroke penalty to any group that takes longer than whatever the benchmark is?
At the professional level, with big dollars on the line, each player should have a ‘pace of play’ index next to their name and the authorities should really pay attention when organising the groupings and tee times.
Is the professional game any different than just a standard Saturday comp at your local club, in as much as we all know who the slow players are. Some golfers seem to take an inordinate amount of time to get the job done, we all know who they are and dread being drawn behind them because we know that means to cancel any plans for the afternoon. And it also can render your round of golf into sheer frustration for five hours plus.
By Michael Davis
Kiwi Ryan Fox’s win in The Open brought me almost as much joy as an Australian winning the event.
I’ve always liked the way the New Zealanders go about their sporting pursuits and how well they do on the world stage for a country with such a small population.
I loved the way Fox got on with it in the final round at Birkdale and refused to be broken despite missing what seemed an interminable number of birdie putts.
Just as admirable was the brave way he holed long par saving putts to stay in the contest and above all the speed at which he did it. Lesser men would have gagged and drifted down the leader board.
Even better was the fact that he took just 22 seconds to hole the putt on the final hole of the tournament to lift the auld claret jug.
Take note, all slow coaches at all levels of the game. You do not need to stand over the ball for 10 minutes on the putting green. ‘See ball. Hit ball!’ At the highest level, you’re destroying the game as a spectacle. In ‘clubland’ you’re creating unnecessary angst.
Slow play is certainly a blight on the game on the biggest circuit of them all – the PGA Tour.
It’s clear who the offenders are without naming names. It’s not only jittery youngsters trying to hang on to their playing tickets.
But invariably they are the ones punished. It’s never the big names.
Tell me the last time a tournament drawcard was slapped with a two -stroke penalty for slow play. For too long they have been beyond reproach.
The penalties are in the rules for ‘tour tortoises.’ They’ll soon get a wriggle on if officials are brave enough to add two shots to their score at the end of the day’s play.
By Peter Owen
AS Ryan Fox explained after his Open win, hitting a golf ball isn’t that difficult a proposition for a touring professional. Work out how far you are from the hole, select an appropriate club, and step up and hit it.
He said that was the way he’d always played, and it seemed to work all right for him.
It would work all right for everybody else, too, but most current professionals prefer to stretch out the process – perhaps to ensure we watchers understand the difficulty of what they’re doing and appreciate their rare skill.
I watch a fair bit of tournament golf, and I can’t say the pace of play really bothers me, though I’m sure it must stretch the patience of players like Fox and his speedy mates, who just want to get on with it.
Those who organise tournaments, and those responsible for telecasting them, seem to know when the events are going to finish and, though they may publicly condemn slow play, the fact they so seldom take any action against offenders suggests they’re not unduly concerned.
The worrying thing for me is that the example the slowcoaches set in tournament play is being copied by club golfers all over the world.
I don’t do it so much these days, but there was a time when I’d get up early and play golf on my own at my local course before going to work. I didn’t ride in a cart then, but I’d still get in 18 holes in not much more than two hours.
Now, I know it’s going to take much longer than that when you’re in a group of four, playing in a midweek or Saturday competition, but it does give some insight into the amount of time we waste during a round of golf.
I am constantly frustrated by how long it takes a group of golfers to complete the process of putting – everybody, seemingly, following the lead of their idols on television and marking their ball, then stepping away to contemplate their next stroke, even if all that’s left is a 20cm tap-in.
Ask any regular golfer and they’ll tell you their biggest gripe is slow play. Everybody knows it, but nothing is ever done. I’ve been a member of my club for 35 years and I can’t ever recall anybody ever being penalised for taking too long to get around.
If club officials aren’t going to act, perhaps the answer does indeed lie with the behaviour of the players we see each week on our screens. But they won’t change their ways unless they’re forced to by tournament officials, and I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
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