R&A 9 Hole Tourney...just before The Open

[Kalen Braley]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nine-hole-format-could-shot-arm-game-needs-110653384--golf.html

Thoughts??

[MCirba]

What if there's a playoff?   

[BHoover]

Perhaps The Open should move to a 9-hole format to improve pace of play and grow the game?

[Paul Dolton]

Don't know about a shot in the arm. If it still takes over two hours still be lots of waiting for players.
Better idea would be 18 holes in  three hours open !
They have got to speed it up. The game is so boring, so much of the time, to watch.

[Niall C]

I played a round of golf yesterday with a student who caddies part time at one of the best known UK courses and he advises that the numbers of caddies has dropped by something like 30% in the last couple of years even though visitor demand at this course has substantially increased. Apparently the reason for a number of the former caddies packing it in is pace of play. It's become so slow that they can't get two rounds a day and therefore they are not interested.


To hark back to another thread, it's up to all of us who teach kids be it college teachers or parents to instill in them the fundamentals of etiquette and not being slow. That and the tours finally hammering the top players for being interminably slow.


Niall

[Jason Way]

The R&A's announcement of this 9-Hole championship came on the heels of a study they conducted which found that current and potential players want to devote, on average, 1.9 hours to a golf outing.  Certainly, there is a pace of play implication to that finding, but I think the more important implication of the R&A's announcement has to do with flexibility. 


What I think they are saying in setting up the 9-Hole Championship is that they are willing to be a role-model of flexibility in order to keep players saying yes to the game.  There has been a false and untenable choice baked into the perception of rigid adherence to the 18-hole format for some time.  Golf consumers seem to think that the only choice they have is 4+ hours or nothing, and at some facilities, that is unfortunately the case.


With this championship the R&A is reinforcing the notion that players should get out and play as much as their schedules allow, and that facilities should be flexible enough to let them.  At that level, I think that this 9-hole Championship has the potential to have a real, positive impact.