SURVEY: Who are the slowest players: LPGA, PGA Tour or Top Ams?

[Jerry Kluger]

I am serious - it is getting painful to watch any golf with the time it takes for the players to go ahead with their shot when it is their turn to play.  Thank goodness that I recorded the US Am as I really wanted to see how they played CB and there certainly some fun shots to watch but it seemed that 99% of the time they were going around a putt for the 2nd time or taking their 5th practice swing.  LPGA players are incredibly mechanical and oh so slow. PGA Tour players still wait for their turn to decide how far they are or look at their putt from the opposite side.  I didn't include Champions Tour as some of the seniors are getting better but with Bernhard Langer in contention it is still going to be painfully slow.

[Phil McDade]

Few are more deliberate than Langer.

Finding an LPGA Tour player who is not slow takes some doing. Creamer and Pressel (and Wie, just to be fair ) are all really slow.

Ben Crane was the standard-bearer for years on the men's tour, but is said to be getting better.

On the other side of the coin, I continue to be impressed with the pace of play of Dustin Johnson. It may have cost him a major or two, but hey, it's good for the long-term health of the game.

[Joe Bausch]

Wasn't Glen Day's nickname "All"?

[Garland Bayley]

...
On the other side of the coin, I continue to be impressed with the pace of play of Dustin Johnson. It may have cost him a major or two, but hey, it's good for the long-term health of the game.

Bubba is fast too!

[Jerry Kluger]

Problem with golf is that you play at the pace of the slowest group in front of you unless they are put on the clock which is extremely rare.

[Jeff Loh]

Quote from the "New Yorker"
"Vijay takes him time. And yours...."
Brilliant!!

[Tim_Cronin]

If you have one day to live, go to a high school golf tournament. It will seem like forever.

[Sean Leary]

If you have one day to live, go to a high school golf tournament. It will seem like forever.

Now that is funny.

[Jerry Kluger]

Tim: Sad but true and that exhibition of slow play at the US Am was indefensible.

[Steve Salmen]

Just from observation, I think Stuart Appleby golfs at a glacial pace.

[Martin Toal]

Langer and Harrington are famously deliberate. I think I heard once someone joking that the Tour needed to put Langer on the calendar not the clock. Ben Crane was very slow, and also made it worse by spending the time conducting a routine of twitching and jerking like a patient suffering acute withdrawal from their anti-epileptic medicines.

Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson are pleasingly brisk. Good for them.

[Andy Shulman]

I'll nominate Jim Furyk as the slowest putter on any tour.  His pre-putt routine is unwatchable.  Two things that aren't helping pace of play on tour and otherwise having the caddy check the player's alignment before every shot (this seems to occur primarily on the LPGA Tour) and distance measuring devices (in amateur events).

[Tom_Doak]

I thought the question meant which GROUP was the slowest.

It just seems to be getting worse and worse the further down the food chain you go.  The younger players have all had the preshot routine and the cheater line drilled into their heads and seem incapable of just looking at the shot and hitting it.  I have played with some very good junior players in the past 2-3 years and none of them could keep up with a normal four-ball pace.

Just look at the fact that a "full field" for the Tour is 144 or 156 players, and they can barely finish before dark, when a full day of golf for a golf course operator is 200+ rounds.  The first weekend of daylight savings time in Myrtle Beach, The Legends used to run 300 rounds per course!   

[Jerry Kluger]

Tom: I thought the pace of play at the Bandon courses was refreshingly brisk and I do not believe it was just the GCA guys.  People were playing the game and enjoying themselves and the course without waiting until it was their turn to play to determine what club to hit or how their putt would break.  And BTW, most of the GCA guys I played with used the cheater line and it did not slow down play - to me, that is a myth - 5 practice putting strokes and waiting until it is your turn to walk around a putt are the main culprits in slowing down play but that is a subject which has been covered in many other threads.

[Ben Kodadek]

NOT Jason Topp

[Melvyn Morrow]

I have had an e-mail on this subject from a friend over the pond who has advised me that the slowest players he encountered were American. In fact he goes on to say they were a 4 Ball at Royal Dornoch with Caddies. He was rather annoyed with his own countrymen but more so surprising that the Caddies never asked his party to ‘play through’. He has decided not to renew his Membership over this encounter. Think that shows his annoyance in a big way, ops.

Whatever happened to honest straightforward courtesy, although it does not speak highly about the Caddies either.
 
But then is Dornoch rapidly following in the path of the R$A, chasing the money trail with golf becoming secondary perhaps? See its those paths again, they always cause trouble.

Melvyn

[Jim Briggs]

If you have one day to live, go to a high school golf tournament. It will seem like forever.

I never realized how true the above statement was until this weekend.  Have a son who is 13, about a bogey golfer, walks up to his ball takes a practice swing and hits.  Is ready to put when it is his turn, one practice swing and hits.  Pace never an issue.  He had 3 of his friends out this weekend, all single digits going into their senior year in high school.  We played in a foursome behind them.  Halfway into the front nine on both Saturday and Sunday they already have a couple of open holes ahead of them on a course where a quick pace is expected.  The deliberation over each shot was painful to watch from a distance.  Discussion on pace with the three high schoolers resulted in blank stares.  They didn't see anything wrong with it (until I told them if they couldnt play up to the group in front, they could pick up their balls and walk until they did...they finally caught up by 18).

Needless to say, i had loong talk with my son about which habits not to emulate and his responsibilities as a member...what he sees on TV can't help in the battle.

[Jerry Kluger]

Melvyn: Was there not quite a bit of gamesmanship by the European team in the Ryder Cup where they were rather deliberate in playing in order to throw off the US team.  It does however seem preposterous that a US team could be forced to play even slower.

[John Kirk]

At the Safeway LPGA tournament in the Portland area a couple weeks ago, we're talking 5 hour, 10 minute twosomes on Sunday.

Beat that.

[Thomas McQuillan]

Nicholas Fasth and Graham MacDowell are meant to be two of the slowest on the european tour

[Germain Pepin]

Ben Crane would be my choice. Ask Rory Sabbatini.

[Matt Bosela]

I'd nominate Tiger as one of the most deliberate guys out there.  Like Nicklaus, he won't hit a shot until he's absolutely ready.

Mike Weir is also very, very slow in his decision making.

On the other side, it's refreshing to watch some of the younger kids and how quick they are, like McIlroy and Rickie Fowler.

[Jason Connor]

How can I play in a 5-some last weekend that averaged 85 and played in 3:45?

Granted we 5 know the course inside and out.  In pro tournaments they will have played the course only a few times in the last year or a few times every.

What if -- just for fun -- they put an official with every group and he had a clock.  The clock would only pause when that group had to wait to hit (ergo you don't need such an official with the first group).  If the cumulative total hits 4 hours, the group is DQ'd.

It would be an interesting exercise to see how scores would be affected.

On the PGA tour, by how much would the average players score decrease?  1 stroke?  0.3 strokes?

[Bill_McBride]

At the Safeway LPGA tournament in the Portland area a couple weeks ago, we're talking 5 hour, 10 minute twosomes on Sunday.

Beat that.

John, did they play at that glacial pace at Columbia-Edgewater as well?

[Sean Leary]

Stroke play tournament golf is always going to take longer than normal golf because everything gets putted out.

I still think you can play fast with the cheater line and taking multiple practice swings. You just need to do everything else fast.

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