[Garland Bayley]

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?

Yes, Bill. They played at a glacial pace at Columbia-Edgewater as well. The women are always slow. John's reported 5 hour 10 minute rounds actually sounded quick to me given their usual pace. The worst thing about it is that they could probably be lapped by a couple of high handicappers playing rounds in 2:35.

[Pete Lavallee]

Garland,

I suspect any of those girls could clean your clock in under 2 hrs! The real question is: can they make a decent living in that amount of time?

[Kris Shreiner]

The slow play by Americans on U.K. links courses is often mentioned by our Scottish cronies. Caddies are often reluctent to urge their players to let folks through, out of fear of taking a hit on their tip if their players react poorly. A simple request, to wave faster play through and play in a timely manner, by the pro or starter, prior to teeing off, would put all on notice and reduce much of this problem. To be fair, many yanks have never seen or experienced the difficulty of Royal Dornoch's green complexs, especially if conditions are firm and fast. They will naturally struggle a bit, hence the slower play.

Longterm, I believe it is the obligation of ALL golf professionals, junior programs and ANYONE teaching or playing the game to instill a TIMELY PLAY mentality with everyone who they deal with. Explain to newer players (and old ones that "drop the anchor!") HOW they can speed their play by: visually gathering information as they approach their ball and doing as much as possible to be ready to fire promptly.

Timely play is as easy to learn as slow play...it's all a matter of habit.

[Phil_the_Author]

Question?

How can one reconcile quick play on a crowded course with someone who wants to play by the rules? e.g. - A tee ball is seen going into rough and all agree to where it will be found but it isn't. The player now must either derop a ball, whereby he is no longer playing within the rules, or walk back to the tee to play another ball. Valuable time, especially where others may be just coming up to tee off. So, just drop another ball you say? Then his round cannot count toward any handicapping purposes.

Some of the slowest players I've seen are those that are demanding strict adherence to rules that guarantee slower play for all because they deem they MUST play by them all...

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,

I suspect any of those girls could clean your clock in under 2 hrs! The real question is: can they make a decent living in that amount of time?

See Pat Burke's response above.
Gene Sarazen managed to get around Augusta National under par in under 2 hours at the Masters. What does playing slow accomplish? I suspect that if playing fast became the norm there would be more golfers and more competition for places on the ladies tour. Maybe they would have more trouble making a living, because they wouldn't be discouraging the development of more competition.

[Garland Bayley]

Question?

How can one reconcile quick play on a crowded course with someone who wants to play by the rules? e.g. - A tee ball is seen going into rough and all agree to where it will be found but it isn't. The player now must either derop a ball, whereby he is no longer playing within the rules, or walk back to the tee to play another ball. Valuable time, especially where others may be just coming up to tee off. So, just drop another ball you say? Then his round cannot count toward any handicapping purposes.

Some of the slowest players I've seen are those that are demanding strict adherence to rules that guarantee slower play for all because they deem they MUST play by them all...

Why do architects have to build courses where lost balls are common place as opposed to extremely rare?

[Dave McCollum]

Off topic, I know, but here’s a relevant observation.

We just had our annual match play tournament .  The format is six 2-man best ball teams per flight playing 5 9-hole matches head-to-head against all teams in the flight. Three matches are played the first day and two the second, followed by playoff between flight winners to determine an overall champ.   The field is limited to 8 flights, 48 teams, or 96 players. 

When we first started the tournament, we thought we had to schedule the matches 2:15 hours apart with shotgun starts.   We planned to blow a horn at 2 hours, to signal that any match still on the course was over and that the score at that point was final.  We never had to use the horn that year and have since scheduled the matches at 2 hour intervals.  Granted, the format lends itself to speedier play, but so does the clearly stated requirement that slow play will not be tolerated.  Each match has two hours to play (win, lose, or halve) and get to the next match.

It is everyone’s favorite tournament of the year (“The most fun that I’ve ever had in a golf tournament” is the usual comment).   The quality of play is quite high—lot’s of birdies—and the competition is intense.  I think it proves that it can be done. 

[Pete_Pittock]

We might be seeing a sea change. About three months back there was an announcement that the college coaches were establishing a panel to look into slow play. ARTICLE LINK: http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-tours-news/blogs/college-golf/2010/06/panel-to-look-into-slow-play-a.html
Well, I just finished officiating a womens' event cohosted by Oregon State and Portland State at Landon Farms south of Portland.
The only thing that seemed never-ending was the playoff for individual champ between Whitney French (OSU) and Kelsey Kipp (North Texas) which went twelve holes (21 pars, 3 bogeys) before Kipp won.

Par 72 6100yds. 78 players in 26 groups. 36 hole shotgun start Monday, 18 hole 1-10 start on Tue. w/10 minute intervalls.  The officiating staff was boosted from 3 to 5. For the first time the shotgun start had an enforceable pace of play policy, with a 4:40 goal, and time pars for every hole. The players were well prepared by the coaches. Only one group was ever put on the clock, early in round 1, and thet were timed for one hole until they were ahead of pace. The 8:00 am round was complete and the second round 'officially' started at 12:50, with many groups legitimately continuing after the 1st round score cards wer handed over. The last player was off the course by 5:30, with at least 90 minutes of light left (historically it's about 10 minutes). On Tuesday the last groups off each side played in under 4:20.

What was the difference? Outside of a non-penal setup, the players were self policing on pace. They were read to play when it was their turn and "ready golf" seemed to be the order of the day. A faster first round allows a more relaxed pace in the second round because they started early, legally.In fact, we had to tell the today's first groups to slow down because they were 20 minutes ahead after six holes and would have to wait at the turn.


If the PGA tour reduced fields by 12 players pace would be much better with less delay at the turn, but that will never happen as that would means fewer tour cards.

[jeffwarne]

Question?

How can one reconcile quick play on a crowded course with someone who wants to play by the rules? e.g. - A tee ball is seen going into rough and all agree to where it will be found but it isn't. The player now must either derop a ball, whereby he is no longer playing within the rules, or walk back to the tee to play another ball. Valuable time, especially where others may be just coming up to tee off. So, just drop another ball you say? Then his round cannot count toward any handicapping purposes.

Some of the slowest players I've seen are those that are demanding strict adherence to rules that guarantee slower play for all because they deem they MUST play by them all...

or you could just hit a provisional.......

[Mark Woodger]

On the subject of Langer being deliberate and meticulous i heard a story once with the following exchange.

Caddie - "Its 147 to the pin from this sprinkler head"
Langer - "Is that from the front or back of the sprinkler?"

 


It is probably not true but funny all the same.

[Pete_Pittock]

Question?

How can one reconcile quick play on a crowded course with someone who wants to play by the rules? e.g. - A tee ball is seen going into rough and all agree to where it will be found but it isn't. The player now must either derop a ball, whereby he is no longer playing within the rules, or walk back to the tee to play another ball. Valuable time, especially where others may be just coming up to tee off. So, just drop another ball you say? Then his round cannot count toward any handicapping purposes.

Some of the slowest players I've seen are those that are demanding strict adherence to rules that guarantee slower play for all because they deem they MUST play by them all...

Philip,
In the US the round would be counted for handicap purposes. The player would be given a score of net par on the hole you describe.

[Paul Stephenson]

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

We had our Regional Qualifier this past Monday.  Only took 6 hours and 20 minutes.

[Mark Smolens]

Jeff, why in the world would you hit a provisional under Philip's hypothetical? On Tuesday at the Illinois Senior Open one of my fellow competitors hit a drive over the big tree on the right side of the 10th hole. We didn't see it land, but there's only the long wet rough there. When we drove up and started looking, we couldn't find it. Should he have been expected to hit a provisional ball there? I can't imagine why. Should a provisional be hit every time one hits a tee shot that can't be seen where it landed? Shit happens sometimes, and this time the guy got the short end of the stick. By the by, we caught the threesome in front of us and waited on our approach shots into the 12th green, so we were not slow. . .

[Criss Titschinger]

The worst example of slow play that I've seen at the professional level was during last year's Solheim Cup.  Fourball matches took 6 hours!!

Glad someone mentioned the 2009 Solheim Cup. That was the worst I ever saw. I went to Crooked Stick in 2005, and I don't remember it being that slow. You shouldn't have to worry about daylight with 8 matches in a day, half of which are Foursomes.

I haven't been to any college or HS tournaments, but I've been to PGA and LPGA events. LPGA players on the whole are slower than their PGA conterparts.

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