R&A's Dawson: Belly Putter "Fresh Look" News To Me!

Nick Rodger of the Scottish Herald talks to R&A Executive Secretary Peter Dawson about an array of subjects and it seems we have a miscommunication?

At the United States Golf Association's recent agm, Mike Davis, Dawson's counterpart across the Atlantic, injected the whole affair with renewed vigour when he suggested that there was "a new ban-the-belly movement within the R&A".

Over to you, Mr Dawson. "I wasn't quite sure where that came from, to be honest," confessed the chief executive of the game's ruling body.

So good to see the governing bodies are on the same page!

He also talked about bifurcation. And bifurcators. Which is just a little too close to defecator, no?

"I haven't met a bifurcator yet who could tell me where it ended going forward, they are guessing what will happen," he said. "Golf is golf and that's a major strength of the game. If you want to go and invent another game, that's fine. But golf is golf. You could imagine down the road if there's one rule for the amateurs and one for the pros, then TV companies may say 'well this 18 holes business is taking up too much time let's just have 15 hole rounds'. You could get all sorts of things. It's good for golf to have one set of rules. Let's all be playing golf."

And on slow play he sounds a bit more eager to act...

"It is a huge worry," stated Dawson. "At club level, fourball golf is killing the pace of play. In the pro game, some of the players are so slow something has to be done. We are going to give this a lot more attention at our amateur events this year and our championship committee has determined itself to do something about it and apply the policy more strictly. We will put people on the clock and give penalty shots.

Don't tell the Don of the Ponte Vedra Tattaglias that, he doesn't like penalty shots. They are brand damaging!

"The coaches have to think about this. They do tend to teach these young players to have pre-shot routines where they don't start until the other player has played his shot and so on. It can be terrible. The tour golf needs to be speeded up too. It's difficult to know what to do about it unless field sizes are considerably reduced and I don't think that's going to happen. I'm not going to say less pros in tour events. What I've said is simple mathematics and that's the tricky bit. The whole field goes as slowly as the slowest player. I don't pretend I have the answer. The administrators aren't the ones playing."