The clamor of voices saying that the game of golf is suffering is growing. Total rounds are down from their highs earlier in the decade. Courses are closing left and right, with others threatening to close in the wake of the real estate bust. New players appear to be walking away from the game because the combination of time, cost, and effort are too much to get involved long-term. Current players appear frustrated by slow amateurs that take all day to play. In other words, golf needs a bit of a spark.
The problem facing amateurs could be likened to what the PGA Tour faces today. In the final round of the Players Championship on Sunday, the golf was great. The battle between Paul Goydos, Jeff Quinney, and eventual champion Sergio Garcia was fierce and of epic quality. Even without Tiger Woods in the field, the PGA Tour proved that it could produce a dramatic tournament that will go down in the lore of the event. Still, it took the final pairing of Kenny Perry and Goydos just under five hours to play 18 holes of golf. The average time for a pair on the PGA Tour? About an hour less.
The Players was not the only culprit. It took over five hours for the final group of Trevor Immelman and Brandt Snedeker to wrap up at the Masters. Certainly, with a lot of money on the line and titles of significance at stake, it seems more likely that golfers will take a little longer to play their rounds.
But how can it take over an hour more than the average? Over the course of 70 shots, that is almost an extra minute for every shot.
Meanwhile, the LPGA Tour has a slow play policy that allots an average 30 seconds per shot on a hole, plus an additional 10-second grace period. No player can take over a minute on any single shot when being observed or they are subject to a two stroke penalty.
On the PGA Tour, players are allotted a minute extra in addition to the normal time it takes to complete each shot. Over the course of a 72-shot round — par at TPC Sawgrass — that four hour and 40-minute round equates to approximately three minutes and 50 seconds per shot. When compared to the LPGA Tour rule, the average 30 seconds allotted would have been obliterated by over three minutes on every shot. The PGA Tour players do not even approach the minute maximum for any single shot under the LPGA Tour policy.
The positive thing is that there appears to be an impetus by the PGA Tour to address the subject more effectively. The players themselves held a meeting prior to the Players Championship in which two major topics of complain arose — one of those was slow play. The players appear to have had enough with those among them that cannot seem to play at an appropriate pace.
Commissioner Tim Finchem deserves some credit for not dodging this controversial question in his press conferences last week. He basically said that the PGA Tour feels very strongly that this is the appropriate time to address slow play. When questioned by members of the media what that may entail, he said that the Tour was looking into a variety of potential options. Among those options are smaller full field events, easier setups and pin placements, and other options.
Under even further questioning, Tim Finchem said that he would even consider implementing the LPGA slow play policy that seems to have been effective so far this season in helping speed up the slower players on that Tour.
Being more effective is a relative term for the PGA Tour, though. There has not been a pace of play penalty called on a player on Tour in 16 years. Tour veteran Matt Goggin said that even drawing a fine for continued slow play is difficult. He claimed that it took four to five months of slow play just to draw a meager $20,000 fine from Ponte Vedra Beach.
Therefore, anything that the Tour would do to encourage a more natural pace of play is an improvement. The interesting thing is that all of the options on the table for the PGA Tour should actually be implemented, but not just for slow play purposes. What the PGA Tour is suggesting would be good for the Tour, period.
Smaller full field events would make life a lot easier on the PGA Tour in terms of logistics, player management, and cut policy. With less players in the field, there are fewer groups in total. That means that there can be fewer players that are simultaneously teeing off of 1 and 10 on Thursday and Friday. This leads to less cross over and interference in between nines when groups are trying to reintegrate into the flow of the course.
Also, it allows the Tour to entertain a stricter cut policy. Instead of worrying about Rule 78, a Saturday cut, or any solution that would not result in helping slow play, the Tour can make the two round cut into the top 65 and ties. Bottom line is that the tournament would flow much better.
If you are a reader of my writing, you know my favor for easier setups on Tour. Long rounds — in part — are produced by setups that are too long, too hard, and too fast. TPC Sawgrass could have become completely unplayable over the weekend were it not for the Tour’s maintenance team stepping in overnight after each of the rounds.
If fewer courses were not set up to play like Augusta National (which is a bad thing nowadays), players would not have to agonize over every single shot. Decisions would be easier if a player knew that a mistaken putt would not mean a second putt that could be longer than the first. Reserve those kinds of conditions for the U.S. Open.
Fans like birdies, despite what 52.6% of supposed golf fans said in a Golf Digest survey. Let fans enjoy the experience and let players display the amazing talent that they have. A nice side effect will be quicker rounds and happier players. Just as Stephen Ames, who uttered an obscenity accented sentence after his opening round at the Players. Imagine the expletive in his comment, "Go ahead, keep making courses this hard."
Everyone wins when rounds are played faster. The players are happier. Television audiences can see more shots, more rapidly. Fans in person will not have to wait forever to see a group roll through a hole they park at early in the morning. The Tour will have a less difficult time in administering fields and events. And hopefully, amateurs will see that rounds can still be played in four hours or less and commit to becoming faster players themselves.
I remember the days when I could play a morning round and still catch the finale of a tournament. I would like to have those days back.
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