GOLFERS ARE TIRED OF ALWAYS PLAYING THE WAITING GAME
Top players rail over slow pace of play, but PGA Tour refuses to tackle problem
Eventual winner Rory McIlroy referred to slow play as an epidemic on the PGA Tour after his Friday round at the Players Championship took more than five-and-a-half hours to complete.
“Honestly, I think they should just be a little tougher and start penalizing shots earlier, and that would be an easy way to fix it,” he said after that round.
The most glaring example came in round one, when play had to be called due to darkness before the last player could finish his round. On a beautiful sunny day with mild winds, without a single delay, and armed with an extra hour from daylight saving time, the last player couldn’t get finished.
The question is, does the PGA Tour care?
As long as sponsors are happy and golf fans continue to tune in, the tour has shown no interest in policing the issue. There is a pace-of-play policy already in place that allows for penalties to be handed out, but when Miguel Angel Carballo and Brian Campbell were penalized at the 2017 Zurich Classic, it was the first such ruling in 22 years. Not exactly a point of emphasis.
It’s possible the PGA Tour is afraid of directly influencing the result of the tournament, afraid of the precedent set if penalties were called. After all, if you’re going to start calling it on Jim Herman on Thursday, you’re going to have to call Bryson DeChambeau in the final group on Sunday.
Perhaps from the tour’s perspective, unless a particularly slow player is leading or in contention on Sunday (see J.B. Holmes last month at the Genesis Open), then the broadcast doesn’t dramatically suffer. Television can cut away from the hemming and hawing and cut back for the shot. Fans at the course suffer, but many of them are there for the ambience and the day drinks, plus every week there seem to be more add-ons, sponsored experiences available at the course that the tour can profit from.
Is there an answer? Not an easy one, according to two-time Masters champ Bubba Watson.
On Saturday morning at the Players, having just squeaked into the weekend on the cutline, Watson and Justin Thomas were the first two on the course. The pair got around TPC Sawgrass in three-and-a-half hours. Despite the speedy round, Watson explained that there’s no good way to speed up play on the PGA Tour. In his mind (no doubt, an interesting place to be), there are simply too many players on the golf course.
The Players Championship boasted a 144-man field. He explained that every round, there are three or four par 5s where everyone has to wait for the green to clear, and there are tough decisions along the way, plus other distractions that will slow down the entire field.
“That just happens the whole way, hole after hole, or somebody yells in your backswing so you back off, it’s just, things happen. A bird dives in the water at 17,” he said. “So the only way to do it is to cut jobs. If you went down to a 100-man field, but who’s going to vote to cut jobs? … I can penalize you all day long, but you’ve got 144 players, take away 44 jobs and the pace will improve, but 44 people aren’t going to vote for it.”
Unlike Watson, I think there are things that could and should be done, from warnings that would name and shame, to penalties that are an obvious deterrent, to perhaps new formats similar to the shot clock event in Europe. If not for the tour, then do it for the game of golf.
Commissioner Jay Monahan said last week that the PGA Tour won’t make its own rules because playing by one set of rules is aspirational for all golfers. If he views the PGA Tour as an example for all the game, then he should take the No. 1 complaint in the sport for the past 50 years more seriously.
Honestly,
I think they should just be a little tougher and start penalizing shots earlier, and that would be an easy way to fix it.
Watson’s solution isn’t that farfetched. Last year, prior to the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas, the tour’s policy board approved a field reduction from 144 to 132 players because of worries about getting the first two rounds finished.
To McIlroy’s credit, top players speaking out could go a long way. We already saw the amount of attention some high-profile voices received when they, rightly or wrongly, spoke out against the implementation of the new rules. For their part, many of the game’s top players aren’t slow players. McIlroy, Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Tiger Woods all play quickly.
Until something is done, both professionals and weekend duffers are stuck with the same old way of avoiding slow play; getting yourself an early morning tee time. Unfortunately, on the PGA Tour, that’s not an ideal solution. Especially on a Sunday. JMccarthy@postmedia.com