Slow Play Claiming More Victims?

Admittedly, I take some perverse pleasure in seeing how slow play is about to claim more victims, even though the problem is not entirely the fault of the players.

Still, as Doug Ferguson reports, the tepid pace of play on the PGA Tour may force a cut in the number of players teeing it up on the weekend check.

Now, the PGA Tour again is looking at changing the longtime policy that the top 70 and ties make the cut. Several alternatives were discussed last week by the Player Advisory Council, and it likely will come up at the tour policy board meeting at the end of the month.

Among the options:

-Top 60 players and ties.

-Top 65 players and ties.

-The nearest number to 70 players.

-Top 70 and ties, but if the number goes over 78, revert to nearest to 70.

-Top 70 and ties make the cut on Friday, and another cut on Saturday for top 70 and ties.

And your buried lede of the week...

One reason the cut policy is under review is to cope with pace of play. When a large number of players make the cut and bad weather is in the forecast, officials have little choice but to play in threesomes off both tees. That can really become a problem on the West Coast, where tournaments typically end at 3 p.m. for network television.

I wish Tiger had taken a slightly different stand...

Tiger Woods said he would favour top 60 and ties, no exceptions.

"Play better," he said. "Either you play better or you don't."

Or play faster? Or setup courses with a little less rough, fewer 2-paces-from-the-edge-holes and maybe the players stand a chance of picking up the pace?

Oh and do something with the ball so that the entire field can't reach every par-5 in two.

"That's just ridiculous, in twosomes"

An unbylined story on Tiger fuming about slow play at golf's sixth major where it's all right in front of you...

Woods, playing with Vijay Singh in the final pairing, finished the 18th hole in semi-darkness, a few minutes past 8pm local time at Quail Hollow.

The start of play was delayed by two hours due to nearby lightning, so Woods and Singh did not tee off until 3.40pm.

He could not understand why it took more than four hours, 20 minutes to play 18 holes, especially on a course well designed for walking, without many long distances between holes.

"That's just ridiculous, in twosomes," said the world number one, who bogeyed the last two holes to finish a shot behind leader Rory Sabbatini of South Africa.

"I didn't think we were going to finish and Vijay didn't either, but we got it in somehow.

"It's like playing under caution all day. No-one ever gave us a green to go. That was the way it was and we had to deal with it."

Lowe On Slow Play

Douglas Lowe watched the fhe final of the Scottish Boys' Championship at Dunbar played in 2 hours 50 minutes and came away wondering why it now takes professionals 5 hours to play 18 holes.

"There's nothing more selfish than a slow golfer."

Nice questions and slow play rant from Nick Price during an early week conference call to kick off his Champions Tour debut.

Q. One last question, with respect to pace of play, which I know you've always felt strongly about, it's certainly showing no signs of abating. What are your thoughts about it?

NICK PRICE: Fines. Fines. Fine them. Penalties, two-shot penalties, a fine. A warning, a fine and then a penalty. That's the only way they're going to stop it. I don't know how they're going to enforce it, but the only time any guy is going to pay attention is when you penalize him for slow play because it's such a disease, and there is no way on this earth that three professional golfers should take more than 4:15, 4:20, to play 18 holes of golf.

Q. You'll find on the Champions Tour we play quickly.

NICK PRICE: That's what I'm looking forward to, threesomes. McNulty has given me the heads up there because that was one of the first questions I asked him, what's the pace of play like. I think most of the guys out here, we learned a long time ago that the longer you take, the worse it gets.

Q. The players have somewhat of a responsibility. Obviously average golfers look to the pros and see that as an example.

NICK PRICE: It's terrible. It's terrible. The problem is that there's only maybe a handful of slow players certainly on the PGA TOUR who make everyone else's lives a misery. There's maybe 12 or 15 or 20 guys who are slow players, and they just slow down the rest of us. A fast player has to play at the pace of a slow player; a slow player doesn't have to play at the pace of a fast player. That's what's so one-sided.

Anyone who's played rapidly or doesn't mess about on the golf course, there's nothing more frustrating than playing with a guy who pulls the same club out three times, then puts his glove on, then looks at the yardage again, throws the grass up, asks his caddie 15 questions and then suddenly decides to hit it. You know, there's nothing worse, and those guys should be fined.

Q. What was your strategy for combating it or dealing with it?

NICK PRICE: I just used to put my mind in neutral. You had to. You had to. You had to learn to deal with it. If you're playing with someone who was really slow, then I would walk slowly, as well, up to my ball so I wouldn't have to wait around at my ball while he was fiddling around getting ready to hit.

So I'd sort of walk around 20, 30 yards away from my ball and then get to my ball just as he hits, so I could go through my same time zone. So you learn as the years go by how to deal with it. There's nothing more selfish than a slow golfer.

Home Of The Four Hour Round

Thanks to reader Steven T. for this link to a Morris County, New Jersey course marketing itself as anti-slow play.

One Last Ryder Cup Question...Follow Up

Earlier in the week I wondered about the impact of a possible four day Ryder Cup starting on Thursday instead of the current Firday-Sunday setup.

One strategic element lost might be that rare time during morning four-balls when the Captain's have to figure out their afternoon pairings. As we saw this year, Tom Lehman twice left J.J. Henry out of afternoon play, only to have Henry light up the back nine and leave everyone wondering why he was left out of foursomes.

This question brought reader Blue Blazer out of hiding, with the great fan of all things USGA insisting that the players have created this awkward situation with their painfullly slow play (five-plus hours for the first four-ball out!). BB says 80s and 90s matches used to end around noon (as opposed to 1 p.m this year), giving the Captain's another hour to sort out their afternoon pairings.

So Blue Blazer is right that it is not unfair to the Captains to have to make their afternoon pairings with only nine or so holes of golf played for some.

It's a slow play problem.

The Selfishness of Slow Play...

...my latest Golfdom column is now posted.

Dealing With Slow Play

Golfweek's Jim Achenbach gets plenty of interesting reader mail on slow play remedies.

A Slow Play Penalty!

Granted, reading about it might make you wonder if it was actually warranted. Still, nice to know a tour hands them out. Just not the PGA Tour.

Huggan On Slow Play Disease

John Huggan serves up plenty of fun anecdotes in focusing his Sunday column on slow play, starting with Nicholas Fasth:

Fasth, who is easily golf's most inappropriately-named player, is the sort of guy who spends five minutes boiling a three-minute egg, who takes an hour-and-a-half to watch 60 Minutes and who, on the course, is basically unwatchable. And, sadly, he's not alone. Plenty of others, by dint of their ponderousness under pressure, make viewing golf on television about as much fun as putting on Ryvita-like greens at Dunbar.

Indeed, the European Tour, on the face of it at least, has done more than most to combat the spread of this insidious disease. Exactly one year ago, Simon Khan was fined £8,000 for taking 16 seconds too long over a tee-shot. During the previous 12 months, the Englishman had been penalised one shot and fined twice more for the same offence. Which is fine until one realises that more prominent names, Faldo and Langer, for example, have never been subjected to that level of scrutiny.

And...

The players are not the only direct causes of slow play at elite level. The advances in club and ball technology and the extraordinary distances even the most ordinary professional can hit shots these days have only added to the amount of time it takes to complete 18 holes. During last year's Buick Classic at the Westchester Country Club, weekend rounds were taking five hours - for two-balls. All because one of the most historic courses in America has a couple of par-4s that a field of professionals can potentially reach in one shot and par-5s they can cover in two.

Hot drivers and balls are no excuse for the nonsenses perpetrated by players on the greens, though. Take the insanely-pedantic pre-putt routines of Phil "round and round the clock" Mickelson and Jim "hang on while I line this one up again" Furyk. Both are enough to drive any spectator away from the course or television. Such contrivances have but one redeeming quality - they are still not as tedious as watching Graeme Dott and Peter Ebdon play snooker.

Tait on Slow Play

Alistair Tait offers a radical approach to slow play on the PGA Tour.

Establish a fixed time to play a stipulated round. If courses such as Pebble Beach and St. Andrews can establish fixed times, then I'm sure tours around the world could do so on a daily basis. If a player – any player – comes in over that time they forfeit a stroke. For serious violations two strokes. The onus would then be on every player in the field to get around in good time.

The time doesn't have to be penal and can be adjusted daily taking into consideration factors such course difficulty and elements.

Radical? Yes, but desperate times demand desperate measures. We've put up with this cancer long enough. 

Ohio Golf Assn: Trying A Competition Ball

Thanks to reader George for the heads on Jim Achenbach reporting in the new Golfweek that the Ohio Golf Association will provide a designated golf ball to competitors in this summer’s Ohio Champions Tournament.

A new event on the OGA schedule, "it will be an event unlike any other."

That's for sure. From the online entry form: 

The Board of Trustees of the Ohio Golf Association has decided to take a stand against the eroding playability of our old courses due to the length of the modern golf ball. The Champions Tournament will be unique in the fact that the committee will identify a golf ball for use by all contestants.

The ball to be used will be a modern ball, with specifications as similar as possible to most popular balls, the only exception will be a lower compression. The ball to be used will be on the USGA’s approved ball list.

Like a tour event, the Champions Tournament will have several stations where ball flight, distance and swing speeds will be measured and documented for the entire field. The purpose is to extrapolate information that will prove useful in the ultimate goal of identifying a tournament golf ball.

If you wish to be part of this exciting experiment, contact the OGA at: tournaments@ohiogolf.org and you may be included in what will be the most revolutionary change in tournament golf since Softspikes.

According to OGA director Jim Popa, the 36-hole event will be played August 22-23 at Windy Knoll Golf Club in Springfield, Ohio, where the Ohio State Mid-Am was played last year. The field will be comprised of Ohio club champions, city champions and local golf association champions, many of whom played the previous year's state amateur.

Alan Fadel, a one-time PGA Tour player and top amateur golfer is chairman of the OGA ball committee and says this is the culmination of several years of research and contemplation by the association.

Though no ball has been selected, both Fadel and Popa revealed that the group is close to selecting one that likely will not significantly favor clubhead speeds over 105 m.p.h. as today's balls tend to do. It will be a 3-piece ball, with a compression of around 70 with a soft cover.

Fadel says they will likely share the name of the ball maker at some point, but both confirmed that the ball to be used is on the USGA's Conforming Ball List.

In phone calls today, both Fadel and Popa emphasized that the impetus behind this project is to create a starting point for dialogue and to amass some information, but ultimately, to find a way to restore relevancy to many of Ohio's classic courses and also to deal with pace of play issues brought on by today's driving distances.

"Here in Ohio we have 800 golf courses and 25-30 just fantastic, world class older courses," said Popa. "And we can't use them anymore."

And he added, "it's time to get this game back where its supposed to be, a game of skill."

The OGA has a history of bold moves that may not exactly be popular in Far Hills (perhaps explaining why so few Ohio residents have served on the Executive Committee). 

The OGA was the first golf association in the country to endorse the use of SoftSpikes.

Could they be influencing another potentially significant trend?

Let's hope so.

Some Consolation

Winner Geoff Ogilvy talked about the pace of play during Sunday's WGC final:

Q: Did the pace bother you, the fact that you guys waited quite a bit?

Geoff Ogilvy: It was quite slow; we waited for most of it, yeah.

Q: What did you say to Mark walking up 10 fairway?

Geoff Ogilvy: I just asked him why they weren't like 15 minutes in front of us in the tee time and not five or ten minutes, just to have a bit of a separation. I know all the TV and all the volunteers and everything want to be on one spot on the golf course, which makes sense. But they could have made it a hole in between us. Me and Davis play quite fast; we probably would have caught them anyway. No big deal. I've never been one of four people on a golf course and waiting (laughter).

Q: What did he say?

Geoff Ogilvy: Who?

Q: Mark Russell.

Geoff Ogilvy: It was because of all the infrastructure and everything needs to be all in one spot. It's a bit of a mess if it's all spread out. And it makes sense.

It was just we played quite fast. We obviously played just a hair faster. It wasn't relentless waiting, but it was enough to be waiting. We were obviously playing each hole faster than the other two guys and we were catching them every hole.

Q: They could have put them off 25 minutes early and it wouldn't make any difference.

Geoff Ogilvy: I would think so. But we may have caught them anyway after four holes. If we have a couple of good holes we might catch them anyway, and you've got volunteers and cameras spread out over three holes, and that may not be what they wanted.

Q: Did you want to play through?

Geoff Ogilvy: We asked the question.

Q: Did you ask?

Geoff Ogilvy: We asked the question on the 8th. Because I was messing around and Zach had done something in the water, I don't know what he did, it looked like he was playing a left handed shot and it went and there was all sorts of they stood around for five minutes, and actually Davis asked the question, hey, Mark, can we go, can we just go in front of them? Because we shouldn't be waiting.

It was fine. We still probably played 16 holes in three and a half hours, so it wasn't bad.