Long waits on par 3 tees -- bad design, or bad play?

[Phil McDade]

This week's US Women's Open at Blackwolf Run has seen significant backups (two groups waiting, in addition to the group teeing off) on the tees of at least two of the par 3s -- the 6th from the Meadow Valleys course:



and the 13th from the River course:



Back-ups on par 3s, of course, aren't uncommon. But I saw something at this week's championship that I'm not sure I've seen before at a major -- players already on the green on a par 3 marking their balls, so the players waiting on the tee could hit on, before the first group of players had putted out.

Are these long waits the result of:

-- Bad, overly penal designs?
-- Glacially slow play of the competitors?
-- The pressure that comes with playing a major, and/or major championship set-up with tough pins and such?

(If a combination of two or three of these, please assign percentages! )

I have my own thoughts on the two holes, but wondering what others think.

[Andy Troeger]

Phil,
I'd be curious how unusual it is to see these backups on the ladies tour (or the men's tour even) on Thu/Fri rounds? I get the impression its not that unusual, sadly. This might be a little more extreme than most, but given the quality of the golfers the 13th (4 River) isn't really that hard. I don't think its a great hole, but I also don't recall waiting when I actually played it during normal resort play. The pin wasn't even close to the water yesterday. The 6th (15 MV) is a wonderful hole but its very tough.

The play this week has been incredibly slow--I don't watch enough ladies golf to know whether the course is just that hard that its really slowed them down or whether this is normal. Perhaps a combination of the two. It does take longer obviously when the field averages 78 than it would for fewer strokes.

Its some combination overall of the three factors you mentioned (although I don't think its a matter of good/bad architecture so much as just plan tough. The 6th is a much more interesting hole than the 13th IMO. I remember you not being a fan of 13 either, so curious what you'll end up saying.

[Tom_Doak]

I can't see any reason for the long waits on the latter hole, with the water in play by the green.  You're either in the pond and dropping, or not.

The other hole probably includes a decent amount of looking for balls and attempting difficult recovery shots, and that's always going to cause some backups.  But it's a really good golf hole, so I don't see how you can call that bad design.

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

I'm not sure the 13th has a drop zone; Pressl had to re-tee her ball after putting one in the water Friday.

[Adam Clayman]

The other factors that contribute are the number of players and the dispersion of tee times.

[Matt Kardash]

The water par 3 isn't overally penal. That green is HUGE. There is so much room between the left edge of the green and the water on the right. Sure, having water up the right makes for a tough hole, but honestly, I watched a lot of the coverage yesterday and didn't see anyone in the water.
As Tom says, I bet the meadow valley's par 3 slows down play more. Either you hit it short and left and are looking for the ball, or you hit the green and take a long time to read the put because the green has a huge amount of countour, or you hit ir right and have to take a long time to chip through the huge contour. It's just a great hard par 3.

[Jim_Kennedy]

At that length, and with that much trouble around it, the 6th is little different than a short par 4 that is driveable by some players, but not all.   

[Carl Rogers]

The few times I see the women play on the tube, they are preposterously   s  l  o  w.

Are they put on the clock like the men?  

Or is it they are all slow, so that in a relative sense they do not seem that slow?

[Tom_Doak]

They are all slow.  It's been taught into them by teaching pros giving them precise pre-shot routines, and telling them to start over if anything disturbs them in the pre-shot routine.  Only some of the men listen to their teaching pros that much.

There also isn't much peer pressure on the LPGA Tour to play faster.  At least on the men's tour, Ben Crane and others know that half the guys in the field would like to kill them for playing so slowly, and they are prompted to try and speed up a bit.

[jeffwarne]

They are all slow.  It's been taught into them by teaching pros giving them precise pre-shot routines, and telling them to start over if anything disturbs them in the pre-shot routine.  Only some of the men listen to their teaching pros that much.

There also isn't much peer pressure on the LPGA Tour to play faster.  At least on the men's tour, Ben Crane and others know that half the guys in the field would like to kill them for playing so slowly, and they are prompted to try and speed up a bit.

I chaperoned a group of 4 gilrs at a MET jr. event.
All had stupid, long preshot routines, complete with 2-4 practice swings.
On the second hole, I banned practice swings and on the third hole banned marking their balls on the green.
Play remained the same but the pace improved dramatically---which means we just waited longer on every shot for the group in front

[Pete_Pittock]

    Phil - Neither.
     Its Like trying to put a quart of water into a liter bottle.
    I don't know what the pace clock was on the par 3s, but I would assume it's around 12 minutes. The groups were being put out at 10 minute intervals.   If you assume the first group of the day plays at the intended pace of play, each group will have a 2 minute wait when they get to the tee of the first par 3, waiting for the prevous group to putt out, and this 2 minute wait will accumulate with the arrival of each group.
    After the sixth group of the day there will be a one group wait on the tee. With thirty groups or so being on the course, it is not unexpected that a three group wait will occur sometiime during the day. Once the logjam occcurs, it will only get better, temporarily,  if a group is out of position.
    One possible solution is to increase the spacing between groups from 10 to 12 minutes, and start the first groups nearly an hour earlier. Another possible solution is to build one or two starter times into the tee sheet, which will easy the wait on the tee, but likely not eliminate it.
    

[PThomas]

Tom:

I'm not sure the 13th has a drop zone; Pressl had to re-tee her ball after putting one in the water Friday.

not a lateral drop there Phil?

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

I'm not sure the 13th has a drop zone; Pressl had to re-tee her ball after putting one in the water Friday.

not a lateral drop there Phil?

Paul:

I saw her re-tee on Friday -- I think she tried to hit a draw into a left pin (??), and it just never got over land. Ker-plunked right of the green.

The 13th played as the second-hardest hole on the course during the championship, with a stroke average of 3.468. Fewer than half the players (48.2%) hit the green in regulation.

For comparison with the other par 3s, the 6th hole played as the 5th-hardest hole (3.317), the 8th as 8th-hardest (3.287) and the 17th as the 10th-hardest (3.245).

For the record, I like the 6th hole a lot -- I think it's one of the best holes in the 36-hole Blackwolf Run complex, because I think it has one of the best greens. I dislike the 13th, as I think it's overly penal and one-dimensional.

[Brian Colbert]

Phil,

It seems like this is the situation on every single par 3 in collegiate tournaments. The standards for pace of play in my generation seem to be getting slower and slower. I can't tell you how many times I've done the "courtesy hit" in par 3s like you described the women doing on one of the par 3s. As bad as the men's collegiate game is, I can only imagine (and admittedly I have not seen it in person) the women's professional ranks are that much worse. Every one of them I watched had a preshot routine which by my estimates was longer than the USGA standard of 40 seconds. The part which I found most alarming was the caddies. Na Yun Choi's caddie was out of control! At some points I thought he was going to take the club from her and hit the shot himself!

I think what we saw on the 18th green with NYC was probably the best summary. She had about 10 putts to win the championship at the time, rolls the first one down to about 1.5 feet, MARKS IT (!), reads it from ALL FOUR SIDES (!), and then finally rolls it in! Just hit it!


So as far as your question, I would allocate the following percentages to each:

Bad, overly penal designs: 0%
Glacially slow play of the competitors: 90%
The pressure of playing in a major: 10%

It's truly hard to allocate blame for who's responsible in this trend. Obviously the player is the one responsible for his/her own timing, but if they have been taught for years by their parents/instructors/coaches/pros they watch/caddies/whoever that they are going to play better if they take longer, how can they expected to know any better?

[Phil McDade]

Brian:

I certainly think glacial play and major tournament pressure are factors as well -- I'd assign a greater percentage to the playing routines than the pressure (I mean, Paula Creamer's enjoyable to watch, but if I have endure any more of her pre-putt routines, I might give up the game permanently).

But it's hard to look at the course statistics and not think design had something to do with this. More players hit the green at #6 (60.9 percent) than any of the other par 3s, yet it still played as the second-hardest par 3. That to me speaks of a difficult (and large) green -- I think it's a very good green, and it makes it a wonderful hole, but the design certainly plays a role in how long it takes to play (i.e., one can assume lots of three-putts -- above the median for the par 3s -- and that as you point out involves a lot of marking, pre-putt alignment and so forth). Given that the 13th hole played as the most difficult (and despite matt kardash's argument, was the hardest green to hit among the four par 3s), and had water lining its entire right side, I'd argue a good share of its half-stroke-above-par average was probably the result of water lining its entire ride side -- in the form of players dropping it into water or playing so far away from the water that it left them with difficult recoveries. I'm not sure that's good design.

[Jeff_Brauer]

As to bad design, this thread is a nice reminder to me that the first par 3 on nearly any course ought to also be fairly easy.  We know it will slow play, but making it a hard one, with ponds or long grass, will make it even slower.

[Paul OConnor]

Not really related to LPGA, but is it still considered poor etiquette to walk ahead to one's ball?  I was thinking about this relative to a comment from someone at a Member -Guest I recently attended.  The guy said that when he plays against people who he knows are fast players, he slows down even more than his usual glacial pace just to aggravate them.

Would it not be appropriate then for the faster player to then move far ahead of the slower, and purposefully hit out of turn, challenging the slower player, in a match play situation, to make him rehit if necessary?  Maybe even hole out one's ball while the slow player is purposefully slow playing?  It seems as though the rules of golf give all the power to the slowest in match play.  In stroke play, there is no penalty for playing out of turn, so might it not be okay to play out one's ball with complete indifference to the purposefully slow poke?

[Brian Colbert]

Phil,

I agree that 13 is not necessarily a good design for a regular player, but we are talking about the best female golfers in the entire world. This was a national championship and I think demanding shots such as this par 3 aren't out of place. The hole was 175-185 yards. I'm going to guess that the average player was hitting 4-iron to what I think is a relatively large green. The hole obviously places a premium on accuracy, but down the stretch of a major championship, the player who makes a loose swing should be punished and the player who makes a good swing should be rewarded. Now about the severity of that punishment, in this instance some players who didn't manage to cross the margin of the hazard again further up and had to re-tee. This is something which I agree is unfair but it is also something we have seen before in Pete Dye's designs. It is also the case that the player does have as much room to miss left as they could possibly use. However, in my opinion no bailout should leave an easy recovery.

I thought what NYC's playing partner (Yang?) did was interesting. She took a 6-iron and hit it onto the front third and two-putted. The confidence of having a middle iron was probably something which enabled her to swing more freely and I think it was an interesting play that I'm a little surprised we didn't see more of.

[Phil McDade]

Brian:

I agree with nearly all of that, but many of the complaints about slow play (particularly on the women's side) focus nearly exclusively (it seems) on pre-shot routines, and don't take into account architecture and design. Everyone seems to agree that the 13th green is large, but it's effectively smaller than it really is, because the penalty for missing the green on the right side is so severe (a re-tee in some instances) that no one flirts with it except by accident (I assume Choi, as good as her ball striking was this week, wasn't intentionally going for the two-rock bounce to the back of the green Sunday ).

To me, the 6th's merits as a golf hole make it OK to have some waiting there (and it comes much later in the round -- back nine -- of the MV course instead of the composite course used for the Open this week). I'm still not convinced of the 13th hole's merits -- a tough hole, yes, but I'm not sure it's a good one.

[Rob Miller]

Back-ups on par 3s, of course, aren't uncommon. But I saw something at this week's championship that I'm not sure I've seen before at a major -- players already on the green on a par 3 marking their balls, so the players waiting on the tee could hit on, before the first group of players had putted out.

Just as an aside, this is a relatively common day-to-day practice here in Japan and in fact most of Asia.  Generally there is a small net or shelter off of the back of the green to hang out while the next group tees off.  I'm told it is intended to speed up play when in fact it seems to do the exact opposite.  Anyone have any insight to where this originated and how it became de facto practice in a number of clubs in this part of the world?  Is this ever done in tournament play?

[Doug Siebert]

I remember when I was a kid it used to be common practice to wait on a par 3 for the group behind to play up, but I never see it anymore.  I never thought it sped up play.  Especially these days when everyone is on a cart.  It takes at most a minute to get up to the green on even the longest par 3, so where's the savings?