Playoff Focus Turns To...Slow Play As Brooks, Rory Talk "Out Of Hand" Problem
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One symptom of not acknowledging the slow play problem is that it is prone to rear its head at all the wrong times.
Say, when the sun is setting and a network is past enjoying the whole lead-in audience thing as a non-star sets up camp debating the merits of going for a green.
Or, I don’t know, any tournament where the sponsor wants the focus to be on the event instead of a problem ignored for too long.
Sorry Northern Trust.
Andy Kostka of Golfweek has the blissfully honest remarks and context of FedExCup top contenders Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy from Wednesday at Liberty National. Both players have the credibility to vent given their amazingly quick pace.
Koepka:
“I get that you can take a long time for your thought process, but once you’re done thinking about it, just go. What else is there to do? That’s been the problem I have,” Koepka said Wednesday. “It’s just gotten out of hand. It seems now that there are so many sports psychologists and everybody telling everybody that they can’t hit it until they are ready, that you have to fully process everything. I mean, I take 15 seconds and go, and I’ve done all right.”
Don’t forget agents, physios, short game instructors vs. long game instructors, launch monitor technicians, Soul Cycle instructors and dietitians, too.
This has actually been an issue for decades—do not hit until you are committed—but the lack of support from Tour HQ to enforce the rules has prevented real action.
Rory has a simple solution:
“For me, I think the guys that are slow are the guys that get too many chances before they are penalized,” McIlroy said. “So, it should be a warning and then a shot. It should be, you’re put on the clock and that is your warning, and then if you get a bad time while on the clock, it’s a shot. That will stamp it out right away.
Deducted FedExCup points have been mentioned as a sound solution, too. And it would get the FedEx mentions up, too!
But Koepka ultimately hit on the most problematic issue of all for golf: the game just takes too long to play at all levels, but it’s especially hard o watch at over 5 hours for a round. The days are too long for fans, volunteers and TV, and it’s hard to see how that time span isn’t deadly. Especially when you put it the way Brooks did:
“Five and a half hours to play golf is a long time. Everybody’s going to get bored,” Koepka said. “There’s not much action in golf. If you really think about it, you’re probably only playing for about five minutes — maybe six, seven minutes total — and the rest of the time, I’m just walking. You try walking by yourself for four, four and a half hours, and see how boring it gets.”
Hey, on that note, coverage of the Northern Trust starts with PGA Tour Live Thursday and no galleries until 10 am after a nasty storm blew through Liberty National.
