Slow Start: This & That From Day One Of Women's Olympic Golf

There was plenty of good news coming out of day one from the women’s competition. Just not enough to overshadow the impossible-to-ignore pace of play.

As Alan Shipnuck notes at golf.com, there were 25 rounds under par and all of the elite women in the world posted decent enough scores to stay in the medal hunt. The quality of play was excellent. But not at a watchable clip.

Thailand's Ariya Jutanugarn established a new course record for women, posting 66, reports Doug Ferguson for AP.

I wrote for GolfDigest.com that Inbee Park (-5) made a bold proclamation about a gold medal becoming a "career highlight" a day after saying it was hard to put the Olympics into a golf context.

What changed? We don't know. But we also will never know the pressure she's facing from Korean media and officials.

The 5:30 pace for later rounds that had people taking and wondering why the women were taking 30 minutes longer on such a benign, beautiful day at the Rio Olympic course. As I noted for GolfDigest.com, the course is speeding up with the daily mowing regimen, and played a stroke tougher for the women. But ultimately that’s not enough to explain the pace.

The pace issue is made worse in person by the speedy nature of most Olympic sports people are consuming. Golf would be wise to make speed an element of its presentation and disciplines going forward in 2020 (we’ll kick that around more next week).

Hopefully by Saturday they will have clipped some time off the rounds so pace does not become the story.

Steve DiMeglio reports on the slow beginnings and strong endings to the rounds of Americans Lexi Thompson and Gerina Piller.

Rex Hoggard seized on the comments of Stacy Lewis, who noted the slow start by the Americans last week and how the men ended up finishing.

There has been much chatter on social media about the poor announcing from the Olympic Broadcast Services. Neil Midgely notes this of the BBC coverage, which reportedly had a huge audience for the men's golf final round.

Why did the BBC have to rely on Olympic Broadcasting Service golf commentary, as Justin Rose won gold soon after, instead of sending their own commentator? (The BBC has dispatched 455 people to Rio – surely just one of them could be a golf expert?)

In the golf-continues-to-look-great-to-the-IOC, files, we have no Ryan Lochte's! Michael McCann with some sharp insights into that mess. Oh and boxing officials were sent home after a controversial ruling. Take that Slugger!

BTW there is money on the line this week. Ryan Ballengee has the stipends athletes receive for medaling from their countries.