Category Archives: slow play

The Solution to the PGA Tour’s Slow Play Problem

The PGA Tour thinks it has a slow play problem. Players take too long hit the next shot, which adds up to taking too long to play a round.

But that is the problem, long rounds, not slow play. We need to look at it from that end to see what can be done to cut down time time it takes players to make their way around the course. Where can time be saved?

The solution is so obvious. Walking from the tee to the fairway, and from the fairway to the green is golf’s dead time, and that is where time can be saved.

This year major league baseball installed a pitch clock that requires the pitcher to start his motion 15 seconds after getting the ball back from the catcher, 20 seconds if there is a runner on base.

But if baseball were played like golf, it would be about three minutes between pitches, not 15 seconds.

Let’s get back to golf and cut down the time between shots. How? Golf carts.

The PGA Tour is about to be awash with money from the Saudis. It can use some of that money to buy a fleet of golf carts.

Each pairing would have one cart per player. As soon as the threesome, or twosome, has teed off, the players and caddies would get in a golf cart, driven by a volunteer, and zoom down the fairway to their ball. After the approach shot, carts to the green.

That would cut down the walking time from six minutes to 30 seconds, on average, per hole. THAT is how you get players around the course faster.

One more thing. When a player hits the ball into a place that even 20-handicappers don’t visit, and wants a ruling, TWO rules officials, not one, get summoned. They examine the situation, confer, deliver their ruling and that’s it. Play on.

No holding up the tournament behind you for ten minutes to have your discussion with the rules official. The ruling gets made, end of story, hit the ball. If the player disagrees with the ruling, make the case AFTER the round is over. But until then, just play.

You read it here first.

A New Solution For Slow Play in Golf

Yesterday at the Gainbridge LPGA, Danielle Kang took forbleedingever to read an 8-foot putt on the 17th green and hit it.

Today I found a Twitter post that had me on the floor. Here it is:

Here’s what I think we should do.

If a player takes more than one minute to hit a putt, and subsequently misses the putt, a one-stroke penalty will be given. Sink the putt, no blame.

How about the same thing from the fairway? If you take more than one minute to hit your shot, and miss the green, you get a one-stroke penalty. Hit the green, no blame.

Slow Play on the Tour–Part 2

About six years ago, I wrote a post about slow play on the PGA Tour. That list of excuses Diaz put together is really quaint, isn’t it?

This year the Tour promises it is finally going to do something about slow play, yes sir, they’re really going to get tough.

You bet.

Here’s what an unnamed Tour player thinks could be done. It’s pretty honest, and funny.

And here’s the middling opinion.

What I think they need to do is:

– Hand out one-stroke penalties. That’s a good one. Keep that.
– Dump the fines, or make them huge.
Publish the list of slow players.
– Make the slow play penalty be self-executing. Just like hitting the ball out of bounds.
– Have a timing official with an air horn follow the group with a slow player, such official to sound one long blast at the 60-second mark. Not only will that get the offending player’s attention, it will get the attention of every other player on the course. Not to mention the gallery following the player. Point made.
– I am also thinking that Gary McCord in a clown suit would run out to give the offending player a pie in the face, but that might get ugly.

But you know, it’s professional golf, which affects my golf game about as much as NASCAR racing does, and which I care about just as much. Which, with no offense to you NASCAR enthusiasts, ain’t much.

My solution if I were playing on the Tour? I would bring a book and make no bones about reading it while I was waiting for a slowpoke I got paired with to hit his shot. It would be a masterful passive-aggressive statement, especially if my group was on television. War and Peace would be a good choice.

Don’t Play Faster, Play More Efficiently

Slow play on the PGA Tour has blown up in the past few weeks. Brooks Koepka (rightly) called out Bryson DeChambeau for taking two minutes to line up and hit an eight-foot putt, which he missed.

(No one seems to have commented on the irony that both B.J Holmes (who plays like he owns the course) in the British Open, and DeChambeau, in the Northern Trust, were paired with Koepka, who would be Death To Slow Play if he could.)

I don’t care a flying fig if Tour players are slow, but I do care about moving it along when I play my recreational game.

What it comes down to, to me, is playing more efficiently. Everyone saving a few seconds every time they do a particularly thing adds up to a significant time saving over eighteen holes. Or even nine.

Here are my suggestions, taken from Bob’s Living Golf Book.

– Take clubhead covers off and leave them off. Fiddling with them takes time, and they get in the way of finding the iron you want. The clubheads won’t get damaged if they’re left bare.

– Know where everything in your bag is so you can get what you need without delay.

– Play from the right set of tees.

– When someone is teeing off and it’s your turn next, stand beside the tee box, ball, tee, and club in hand, ready to go, rather than way over there by your cart, empty-handed.

– Don’t wait for the group ahead of you to clear if you really can’t hit into them. On the tee, consider letting shorter hitters tee off first (if they can leave their egos at home).

– When someone is hitting from the fairway and you’re next, start preparing so you can hit when it’s your turn. Don’t wait until the other player hits before you even start to get ready (J.B. Holmes). This is probably the best way to save time in recreational golf.

– You get one, and only one, practice swing.

– Step up to the ball and hit it. Standing frozen over the ball for the longest time or taking endless waggles or looks at the target does not help you in any way.

– Recreational golf is a social game, but chat when you are walking, and not when you should be getting ready for your shot.

– Always check the ball you’re about to hit to be sure it’s yours.

– After you play your shot, clean your club and put it back in the bag only if you are waiting for someone else to hit. Otherwise, start walking right away. Carry your club, and put it away when you get to your ball. If you’re riding in a cart, get in the cart with your club and go.

– If you have hit the ball five times and it’s not on the green, pick up your ball and drop it on the green when you get there. If you have hit the ball eight times and it is still not in the hole, pick it up and cease play on that hole.

– When looking for a ball that might have gone into high grass, remember that the ball is always 20 yards farther back from where you think it is. (I’m not joking about this, either. You know it’s true.)

– If someone else’s ball might be lost, play your ball first, then go help them look.

– When you get to the green, put your bag or cart on the side of the green nearest to the next tee.

– Read your opening putt as soon as you get on the green instead of waiting until it is your turn to putt. Don’t spend too much time reading the green. Your first impression is most likely correct.

– If you use an alignment mark, don’t spend too much time tweaking the mark, especially if the putt is a long one for which distance is much more important than line.

– Leave the pin in the hole.

– After your approach putt, putt out if it’s a tap-in.

– Falling behind the group ahead of you? To catch up, the first two players to hole out should go to the next tee and tee off, leaving the other two to putt out and handle the pin for each other (if necessary).

Slow play on the Tour

I don’t normally devote a column to professional golf, but I thought I would talk about an article by Jaime Diaz in the May 13, 2013 GolfWorld that many of you might not have access to.

It explains why the pace of play on the PGA Tour is so slow and what can be done about it. It’s not as simple a problem as you might think.

I don’t need to go into too much detail about how slow the Tour is. Five-hour rounds are common, and despite the slow play penalty given to young Tianlang Guan at the Masters earlier this year, Friday afternoon threesomes took 5 hours and 40 minutes for complete their round.

It should be noted, regarding the penalty given to young Guan, that he was asked four times to speed up, but playing slowly is a habit he could not break.

Chinese journalists were asked if they thought he had been singled out, and they said, “Oh, no, He’s really slow. He needs to speed up.”

Diaz lists seven reasons why play is so slow, not making excuses for any of them.

1. Firmer and faster greens require more careful study.

2. Courses are longer and more difficult.

3. Players who hit the ball longer are waiting for the green to clear on par 5s instead of hitting a second shot short and moving on.

4. Sports psychologists encourage longer pre-shot routines.

5. Yardage books and green charts are more involved.

6. Players precisely align their ball when they putt, often even for the shortest ones.

7. There are longer and more frequent discussions with their caddies.

Each of these little things adds up.

The current slow play policy is to give players in a group that is out of position, more than one hole behind, 40 seconds to hit their shot. A player going over this limit is warned, and if it happens a second time while the group is out of position, the player is given a one-stroke penalty.

The last time this policy was enforced was in 1995, when Glen (“All”) Day was nicked.

But if the group is not out of position, a player may take as much time as he wants to.

What to do?

A lot of it has to to with peer pressure and awareness. Many slow players don’t think they’re slow, and get upset when you tell them they are. I’ve talked about that before. Slow is many people’s normal speed.

The policy could be changed to eliminate the warning and go directly to the penalty.

Another would be to speed up play in developmental competition. The AJGA has time stations at several places around the course, and the average time is 4:19.

Things slow way down in college golf, though, where most of the new Tour players learn to play at high levels. They come to the Tour having learned to take lots of time.

Change is possible, though.

A notoriously slow player named Richard Johnson was in the first twosome of the final round of a tournament, which had tournament officials quite worried. He could set back the entire field.

Johnson assured them he would not dawdle because he had an airplane to catch. He finished the round in under four hours, shot a 64, and vowed never to play slowly again.

Most people, and even touring professionals are people, find that when they play faster, they play better, and golf is much more enjoyable.

As for the Tour aggressively speeding things up, that won’t happen until there’s enough motivation to build a consensus among the players. That might take a while.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

A cure for slow play

I would guess the biggest day-to-day problem in golf is not anchored putting, or the juiced-up ball, or LPGA players who need their caddy to help them line up their shot. It’s slow play.

Slow play is terrible on the PGA tour, rampant on the LPGA Tour, and a disease in college golf. All of that trickles down to recreational play and it drives most of us nuts.

There are all sorts of suggestions about how to play faster. Ready Golf was a valiant attempt to get things moving along, but it turned out that people played Ready Golf slowly and we’re right back where we started.

Slow play is caused by slow people. They don’t just play golf slowly. They do everything slowly. They have slow lives. That’s their pace. No amount of faster play tips is going to speed them up.

I think, though, that the problem is not slow play, it’s inefficient play. Three golfers wait for the fourth to get everything done before the next one starts, instead of overlapping their activity.

Example 1: One player tees off, picks up the tee, and walks back to the group standing well off to the side. Then the next golfer walks on to the tee box, etc., in sequence. Instead, the next golfer to play should already be standing beside the tee box when the golfer on it is hitting, and stepping on as soon as the ball is struck.

Example 2: One player in the fairway looks over the shot, takes out a club, does whatever, hits the ball, and puts the club back in the bag. Then the next player starts up. Instead, Player B should have a club out of the bag, ready to hit, by the time Player A is addressing the ball.

Example 3: One player marks his ball, cleans it, puts it down again, reads the green, putts, goes up to this ball and marks it, then the next player starts up. Instead, every player in the foursome can read their putt as soon as they get on the green, so everyone is reading the green at the same time.

Overlapping play, which is efficient, is an easy solution to the slow play problem. You read it here first.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

Can the Slow Play Problem Ever Be Solved?

Last night I was watching The Golf Fix, on which host Michael Breed (bless his heart) gave us his new idea on how to speed up play. He called it One In, One Out, in which you don’t put the club you just used back into the bag until you get up to the ball and are ready to take your next club out.

That saves you the time you take fiddling with your bag instead of just getting in your cart and taking off. Multiply that by all the times you fiddle with your bag during the round and you’ll save some time, but he didn’t say how much.

By the way, for readers of this space who do not live in the U.S., the term “bless his/her heart” is code, spoken parenthetically, for saying someone is a complete fool, but without having to actually come out and say that, preserving a veneer of courtesy. It’s used in the southern United States in almost every other sentence.

Note: Michael Breed is not a complete fool. He’s really a pretty smart guy. But I think he’s being a bit optimistic here.

You’ve all been behind two guys in their cart who drive up to a ball, one of them crawls out of the cart, goes to his bag and inventories his clubs, takes one out, takes the clubhead cover off, looks for a place to put it (how about the same place you put it the last ten times), goes to his ball and hits it (we won’t go over the process that entails), saunters back to the bag, looks for the clubhead cover because he forgot where he put it, finds the cover, puts it on the club, pokes around looking for the slot in the bag where he can put the club back in, puts the club back in, looks around, ambles back the cart, crawls in, and moves on. His partner is the same, and these guys are going to sign up for the One In, One Out plan. Right.

The problem with slow play is slow people. They think slowly, they act slowly, they do everything slowly. There is no picking up their pace because they don’t know how to, not from a sense of not knowing the tricks, but because it is part of their constitutional makeup to be slow.

Even if they adopted every tip imaginable with every intention of playing faster, they do them slowly and nothing would change. These are not bad people. It’s just who they are. It’s how their brains work. They cannot be rushed.

If the cause of slow play is the basic nature of the player, can anything be done? In tournament play there are penalties that can be assessed. In recreational golf, no. You can ask to play through a slow group ahead of you.

If the group ahead is excessively slow and won’t let you play through, you can call the clubhouse and ask for help. Best not to force the issue yourself. Remember, people take this personally.

The best you can do is not be a slow player yourself, just like you don’t use your cell phone while you’re driving. It’s only other people who do that.