The biggest reason for death marches at public courses is 7/8 minute tee times. If you are teeing off 8 players every 15 minutes you will never get them moving.
Scott Burroughs, there is a rule for slow play, it is Rule 6-7 Undue Delay and the penalty is 2 strokes in stroke play. But, the Committee has the power to modify it according to the rules and they usually do. One reason for modifying it is to define what is slow play (ie taking over 40 seconds on a shot) and what is out of position (ie getting to a par 4 with the green clear.) Since each Committee wants to have their own policies it makes sense to allow them to modify this rule.
The PGA Tour does need to put a pace of play policy in place that gives out strokes and enforce it. Until they do, slow play will persist. Unfortunately I don't see them doing that anytime soon.
The LPGA and the Futures Tour (where I was a rules official the past two years) have pace of play policies that they enforce. On the Futures Tour we handed out 19 penalties in our first 19 events last year and I can assure you that when a group of players saw one of us following them, they picked up the pace immediately. The LPGA has been good in the past (even penalizing Nancy Lopez) and hopefully they will keep it up.
The worst slow play problems are actually the European players. With Bernhard Langer, Nick Faldo and the Swedish contingent probably being the worst.
One thing to remember in regards to slow play is that if you are keeping up with the group in front of you, you can take as long as you like. That is what Jack Nicklaus did for years. He walked fast and was at his ball quickly. Then he took his time. But since he didn't get behind he didn't get on the clock. Now he doesn't walk so fast and his group gets timed occasionally.
By the way, I also know who "Deep Bunker"
is and will vouch for his knowledge and experience in tournament officiating. The story, as I know it, was that it was the 10th hole at the US Senior Open in 2000, don't know which round. JWN's group was on the clock. He was second to hit from the fairway and took 1:05 from when the official started the clock until he hit the shot, with no reasons to stop the clock for distractions. The official wrote down 40 on the sheet. I don't know who the official was. The group got caught up at the next hole so perhaps the official knew this would happen and gave him a break.