Golf's slow play problem Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

Quick decision unlikely as PGA Tour continues to explore changes to its pace-of-play policy

Golf Digest Middle East — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 04:24:47 +0000

Sam Greenwood

By Brian Wacker
ATLANTA — The European Tour on Monday announced a four-point plan to address the issue of slow play, one that included an increased threat at applying stroke penalties for those caught twice with bad times. It was a move that was prompted in part by a tweet from Edoardo Molinari earlier in the year demanding something be done about the game’s glacial pace, admitted the tour’s chief executive, Keith Pelley.

How then might the strategy affect the PGA Tour, which recently announced it, too, is exploring a potential expansion of its pace-of-play policy? According to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, not significantly.

“We’re on our path, and we’re on our plan,” Monahan said Tuesday from the Tour Championship. “We’re obviously two different tours, on different golf courses with different setups.

“I wouldn’t say we’re going to be influenced in any way by [the European Tour’s decision].”

Nor will the Euro Tour’s announcement cause the PGA Tour officials to, pardon the expression, speed up the decision-making process regarding changes to their policy.

Indeed, Monahan said the tour is committed to taking a measured approach toward the matter, one that it began discussing in earnest during a Player Advisory Council meeting at the Genesis Open in January. (Tour officials say they were already well down the road of looking at measures to address the issue before videos of Bryson DeChambeau meandering along at the Northern Trust surfaced.)

The conversations have continued through the season and will be a topic of discussion during the next PAC meeting in October as well.

One way the PGA Tour is considering dealing with slow play is by using ShotLink data, which has kept track of every shot—and how long each player takes to hit them—since 2003.

“We’re looking at analyzing all that and really getting a sense of where we currently stand,” Monahan said. “We’re pretty far along in that process.”

How long it will be before any changes are implemented might be another matter, though.

Slow play is not a new issue. Complaints about how long rounds take on the PGA Tour have been voiced for decades, and Monahan noted there have been nine adjustments to the tour’s pace-of-play policy since 1994.

Yet penalties have been rare. At the 2017 Zurich Classic, Brian Campbell and Miguel Angel Carballo were docked a shot in the first round of the team event. The last slow-play penalty before that was at the 1995 Honda Classic, when Glen Day was hit with a stroke.

As the European Tour’s plan will be take effect in 2020, two players familiar with ongoing internal PGA Tour discussions said they’d be surprised if a resolution is reached anytime soon.

That’s not to say the tour isn’t being earnest in its effort to figure out a solution to the problem. “Is there an opportunity to improve? The answer to that is yes,” Monahan said. “We’re committed to determining what those improvements are.”

As for what those are—and when they will be implemented—we’ll have to do the same thing we do when watching DeChambeau and many other repeat offenders: wait.

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Stricter rules and a little public shaming will go a long way to address slow play

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 05:47:21 +0000

By John Feinstein
In 1994, playing his final U.S. Open, Arnold Palmer had a late tee time for the first round at Oakmont. More than five hours later, with the sun fading fast, Palmer and fellow competitors John Mahaffey and Rocco Mediate finally walked off the 18th green.

“I couldn’t believe how long it took us to get around the golf course,” Palmer said. “It was slow.” He grinned. “In the old days, we never needed more than 4½ hours to play in a threesome.” He paused before delivering the punch line. “And that was when Jack was at his slowest.”

Jack Nicklaus was maddeningly slow, especially early in his career. Ben Hogan was probably just as bad. Slow play is anything but a new issue in golf.

The ongoing debate might have been best summed up years ago by Mark Russell, who has been a PGA Tour rules official for more than 30 years. “The problem’s simple,” he said. “We got some guys out here who want to play at 70 miles an hour, and we got other guys who want to play at 40. If we could get everybody to play at 55, we’d be fine.”

But they can’t. For every Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler and Rory Sabbatini—who are quite comfortable at 70—we have Bryson DeChambeau, J.B. Holmes and Jason Day, who have to hit the gas to get to 40.

The problem’s not new, but it has worsened in recent years. Though DeChambeau has become the poster boy for the slow-play issue—thanks to the viral videos of his meanderings at the Northern Trust—he’s far from alone. The rules officials know exactly who plays 70; who plays 55 and who plays 40. Their nickname back in the day for Bernhard Langer was Herr Sundial. Ben Crane went by The Anchor. Glen Day was labelled All—as in “All Day”—within weeks of making it to the tour in 1994. There are others.

Fixing the issue might be impossible, but making the situation better shouldn’t be that difficult. As with any problem in life, the first step is admitting you have one. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and predecessor Tim Finchem always have been reluctant to publicly concede that slow play is an issue because as the leaders of an ultra-image-conscious sport, they know that most golfers view slow play as a pox.

Now, though, the tour has finally acknowledged that it needs to look at ways to speed up play, announcing eight days ago that it would explore changing its pace of play policy to consider penalizing golfers beyond those who are “out of position.” Technology makes monitoring individual players’ pace of play much easier than it once was. In fact, technology is a major reason the whole notion of “being out of position” is outdated and should be abandoned.

In the past, the only way to really tell if a group was slow was when they dropped behind the group in front of them. Because officials couldn’t be certain which player (or players) were responsible for the slow pace, the entire group would be put on the clock. That often infuriated faster players who didn’t like being labelled as slow when they knew one of their fellow competitors was the reason they were being timed.

Now, the tour can know precisely who is responsible for a group falling behind and can monitor that individual.

But the “out of position” argument doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. Rules officials will tell you that most players play better when they’re put on the clock. They’re almost forced to stop over-thinking the game. It’s worth noting that DeChambeau missed an eight-foot putt by a wide margin after his infamous two-minutes-plus walkabout in Jersey City.

Beyond that, it isn’t that hard for a group to fix itself once it has been warned. Once players pick up the pace for a hole or two, they easily get back into position because no one ahead of them is playing that quickly. That’s why the one-stroke penalty that’s supposed to be assessed for a second bad time almost never happens. Players know they’re on the clock so they play faster and—voila!—they’re back in position.

When the team of Brian Campbell and Miguel Angel Carballo was given a one-stroke penalty during the Zurich Classic in 2017 after Carballo was given two bad times while on the clock, it was the first time in 22 years that the tour had given a player a stroke penalty for slow play. The previous victim? Glen (All) Day.

The European Tour is several months ahead of the PGA Tour on this issue. Sort of. On Monday, it issued a four-step plan to address slow play—pointing out that it began studying the issue in May and that this was not a response to the DeChambeau controversy.

Unfortunately, the new rules—which will go into effect for the 2020 season—while a step forward, lack teeth. The most important is to tighten the rule regarding a stroke penalty. Now, a player can be penalized after two bad times, rather than three. All that does is bring the Euro Tour into line with the PGA Tour’s current rule.

The European Tour also will increase fines for being put on the clock on a regular basis during the season, and players will have to go through an educational seminar on the rules of the game every three years. Finally, the tour says it will reduce field sizes from 156 to 144 as long as everyone ranked in their top 125 is guaranteed a spot in the smaller field.

The PGA Tour has been fining players for bad times for years. These days, 10 bad times in a year will get you fined $25,000, and any bad times after that will draw additional fines. For most successful players, this is pocket money, and because the tour doesn’t announce fines, there’s no public embarrassment attached to the fine.

Ben Jared
Public comments from the likes of Koepka have helped bring the slow-play issue to prominence once more.

The best way to speed up play is to use modern technology to monitor every shot played. After one bad time, the next bad time costs you a stroke—regardless of whether your group is in position. If the first group walks onto the first tee knowing it’s on the clock at that moment, it will play faster from the start. That will allow everyone playing behind them also to play faster.

What’s more, unlike the fine system, stroke penalties will be in the public domain the minute they happen. The embarrassment of being called out publicly for slow play will do almost as much to force players to pick up the pace as being told to add one to your scorecard. If a player is consistently slow and consistently receiving stroke penalties, it will be difficult for him to compete.

This issue goes beyond fitting into a television window, or players and fans being frustrated seeing slow players on tour. Golfers at every level and of all ages watch the best players in the world. Younger golfers copy what they see when watching the best players. Slow play has become an issue not only on all tours but on the college and junior levels. If Jason Day isn’t moving toward his ball until he’s visualized his shot, that’s what 15-year-olds are going to do. If Bryson DeChambeau is going to analyse shots from 11 angles and then re-consult his yardage book, why shouldn’t they do the same thing?

It isn’t as if some in golf’s leadership haven’t tried to speed up play at all levels. Remember the USGA’s “While we’re young” campaign? It was a good idea, but, ultimately, amateur golfers are going to mimic today’s best players.

In the end, DeChambeau might go down as the man who finally forced the tour to admit it has a problem and do something about it. There’s no doubt that social media played a role in the most recent outcry. There was never a video that went viral of Nicklaus or Hogan or, for that matter, Nick Faldo when he was the world’s No. 1 player and was a lot closer to Russell’s 40 miles per hour than 70.

The fact that players can use social media to express discontent is also a factor. When Justin Thomas—who was paired with DeChambeau at Liberty National—and Brooks Koepka, both major champions, talk publicly about slow play being an issue, it’s difficult for PGA Tour officials not to react.

The tour has—at last—acknowledged it has a problem. The question now is whether it will come up with real solutions or artificial ones.

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SLOW-PLAY: Top instructors on the root of the problem and how to fix it

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 22:49:42 +0000

Getty Images

By Matthew Rudy
Slow play came to the forefront at the Northern Trust after video of Bryson DeChambeau’s “deliberate” approach to analyzing a tricky 70-yard shot went viral. DeChambeau strongly defended himself, and after the tournament said he was going to do everything he could to play faster so that he could be a good example for the sport.

DeChambeau is hardly the only one involved in the conversation. Weekend players are routinely suffering through rounds of five-plus hours, and despite courses doing whatever they can to stress the importance of pace of play. We asked five Golf Digest 50 Best Teachers to weigh in on the problem of slow play and how they teach their students how to deal with slow players.

Framing the problem

John Dunigan (White Manor Country Club, Malvern, Pa.): I’ve heard some people on social media say that this is a manufactured controversy, but it’s very much an issue, and not just on tour. Junior golf is awful, too—and that’s partly because they’re using the tour players as their models.

Jim McLean (Jim McLean Golf School at the Biltmore, Coral Gables, Fla.): It’s a major issue. Slow play ruins golf, whether you’re talking about a tour event or a regular weekend round at a public course. How many tee times is a course losing when a round takes five and a half hours?

Bernie Najar (Caves Valley Golf Club, Owings Mills, Md.): They clearly take too much time on the tour. They have all the information in the world, and caddies who are making a lot of money. Yes, they’re playing for millions of dollars, but it sets a terrible example that trickles down into the club game.

Mark Blackburn (Greystone Golf & Country Club, Birmingham, Ala.): Yes, it’s an issue for the Tour, but I wouldn’t call it a universal issue. So much of it has to do with course design. In the U.S., you’re usually riding, and the tee boxes are far away from the previous green. I walked 11 miles following [student] Chez Reavie in Kapalua. That takes time. A course with water and sand? It just takes longer. They’re not having the same problems in the U.K., where the classic courses have tees and greens that are closer together. You’re playing in two and a half hours over there.

Dunigan: It’s also a component of how the game is shown on television. When they cut to a player and they’re going through all of these preparations, it takes the time thing out of context. Maybe if they just showed the action, it would help change our idea of what the pace of the game should be.

Gamesmanship vs. Obliviousness

McLean: Most slow players have a bad process, not bad intentions. They don’t play ready golf, and they change their routines. They can’t make up their minds, and they are oblivious to others. Ben Crane was the worst.

Najar: The reality is that if players aren’t going to get penalized for taking too much time, they’re going to use as much time as they can. The other reality is that there’s no real downside to being slow. You’re going to do your thing that makes you most comfortable, and if the speed irritates the faster players, that works to your advantage. It’s much harder for the faster player to control the pace of play than it is for the slower player to do it.

Brian Manzella (English Turn Golf & Country Club, New Orleans): Dealing with the playing style of the other players you’re with is part of the sport. Instead of getting mad, you have to get strategic. If I’m in a match-play scenario with a slow player, I slow down even more to the point THEY’RE uncomfortable. Remember when Sergio and his partner walked off the green at the Ryder Cup and left their opponents there to finish? If I had been playing against them, they’d still be waiting for me to putt out now 10 years later.

McLean: You have to make sure you’re differentiating between a player who is slow and one who is slow to the ball. I taught Keegan Bradley for five years, and he always had that same jerky stop-and-start approach. But we talked a lot about pre-shot routine, and Keegan was always ready to play when it was his turn. He’s not a slow player. He walked fast to his ball, and if it took him longer to walk into his shot, he wasn’t slow overall.

Blackburn: I don’t think it matters if you’re talking about slow play as gamesmanship or somebody who just takes their time. Your reaction to it as a player has to be the same. You have to stay in control of your own space. I teach all of my players to occupy their minds with something else. Talk to the caddie. Count people in the gallery. Anything to keep you from focusing your energy and attention on the slowness. If you do that, it’ll drive you insane.

Najar: Some shots just take a little more analysis—but if you modelled what Tom Watson or Dustin Johnson do, decisively and briskly without hurrying, you’d do so much better. There’d be less mental clutter.

Solutions

Manzella: You’re telling me we have the ability to see the shots every player in the field hits in real time with ShotLink and we can’t figure out slow play on the tour level? There has to be a way to monitor the times so that the second bad time as it is officially measured translates into a penalty shot. And maybe you give the players a timeout or two to use when they have a particularly hard shot.

Najar: There are already rules for slow play. It comes down to the willingness to put a penalty on somebody. Is the tour ready to have a tournament decided because a player got a bad time on the 18th fairway when they’re tied for the lead?

Photo by Amy Lemus/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Blackburn: On tour? With a gun..and a shot clock! When you get away from the tour level, playing from the right tees is a big, big thing. So many players show up and play too much golf course for their skill. More swings take more time. Another trend is the swing stuff…People are more internal, thinking about their technique, instead of playing what’s in front of them. I challenge anybody reading this to an experiment. I don’t care what your handicap is. The next time you go play, play from one set of tees in front of where you normally would, and instead of grinding on your technique, just respond to the challenge in front of you. You’ll experience a whole different game.

A lesson from a recent winner

McLean: I’ve worked more than two years with Bo Hoag, who is going to the PGA Tour next year. We worked hard on his preparation around the ball. I’ve taught him to look decisive and be decisive. Ken Venturi taught me his three-step process, and I still use it and teach it. Aim the club, set the lead foot, set the back foot. Then waggle the club, look twice and go.

Dunigan: When I watch one of the tour guys going back and forth between clubs and debating with the caddie, I always think the same thing. Be decisive and commit! I’d rather the decision be wrong but the swing fully committed than the opposite. You really need to have a mental shot clock. Get three yardages. Minimum, maximum and the number for the target zone. That simplifies your choices compared to the front of the green, the back of the green and the pin.

How you can take action

Najar: If you’re playing with somebody slow, you can’t fixate on what they’re doing, because that just drives you crazy and makes you angry. You need to take some control and say, I see you’re not ready, so I’m going to go ahead and play.

See something, say something

Dunigan: The other skill you have to learn is how to know when to speak up—and you’ll have to do it at some point. You have to be nice but firm, and tell somebody when it’s time to pick up the pace.

Manzella: I want to see somebody like Brooks Koepka actually do that. Peer pressure, you know?

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Even fellow tour pros are calling out Bryson DeChambeau after slow-play videos go viral

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 05:46:50 +0000

Icon Sportswire

By Alex Myers
Brooks Koepka might want to sit down for this. Then again, there’s a good chance he’s already seen a pair of viral videos showing Bryson DeChambeau taking an inordinate amount of time to play a couple of shots during Friday’s second round at the Northern Trust. Either way, we’re pretty sure Koepka won’t be happy about them.

In addition to being the world’s best golfer, Brooks has also become the game’s most outspoken critic of slow play on the PGA Tour. In fact, earlier this year he criticised DeChambeau specifically for his lengthy pre-shot routine in which he calculates things like air density in addition to the usual yardage and wind.

“I just don’t understand how it takes a minute and 20 seconds, a minute and 15 to hit a golf ball; it’s not that hard,” Koepka said at the time.

Well, then he really won’t understand this. The first video shows DeChambeau taking more than three minutes to play a 70-yard shot.

anyone need a nap?

here’s DeChambeau pacing off a 70-yard shot which took over 3 minutes to hit (couldn’t post the entire video it took so long) pic.twitter.com/7A3Azeftyu

— Eric Patterson (@EPatGolf) August 9, 2019

To be fair, it was from an unusual spot, but still. . . . And if possible, the next one is even worse. DeChambeau takes more than two minutes before attempting an eight-footer—and missing.

We can… pic.twitter.com/TOnRS4BXds

— Fantasy Golf Pod (@fantasygolfpod) August 10, 2019

For golf fans, it was hard to watch. But imagine how much worse it was for DeChambeau’s playing partners, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas? Let’s just say neither looked thrilled.

The good news (we guess?) is that Koepka has plenty of support in the anti-slow-play community on Twitter. Here are some of the responses by fellow tour pros to DeChambeau’s deliberate display with two-time European Tour winner Eddie Pepperell going as far as to calling Bryson a “single-minded twit.”

And after all that miss read it by 2 cups ??‍

— Luke Donald (@LukeDonald) August 10, 2019

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!!!! @PGATOUR if you don’t do something about this, SHAME ON YOU!!! As a member, I’m OUTRAGED you can tolerate this. You talk about “protecting the field”, then protect it by penalizing/DQing this type of behavior!! ENOUGH!!!

— Rich Beem (@beemerpga) August 10, 2019

Andrew I’m sorry you’ve stopped watching the @PGATOUR. There are a few players that continually disrespect their fellow pro’s and continue to break the rules without a conscience. It should be self policed but clearly this won’t happen.. so disappointing it hasn’t been stopped. https://t.co/yxfF2fFZ2D

— Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) August 10, 2019

All the governing bodies need to come together and find a solution. It ruins the game for players, fans that watch live plus at home on TV. Something needs to be done and done now

— Ross Fisher (@RossFisher) August 10, 2019

xxxx

Just look at Tommy and Justin, both looking completely bored. Slow players do this to their playing partners making the game less enjoyable. Problem is, the unaffected single minded twit in this instance, doesn’t care much for others.

— Eddie Pepperell (@PepperellEddie) August 10, 2019

Slow play is “slowly “ ruining the game of golf. It’s time the people that can do something, did something. Having said that , the players that are pathetically slow should just have more respect for their playing partners. And get on with it!

— Lee Westwood (@WestwoodLee) August 10, 2019

How is this ok???
Snoozeville
Why is nobody doing anything?@PGATOUR
Consideration for his playing partners is absolutely 0. https://t.co/jCDZoU4JgG

— Thomas Bjorn (@thomasbjorngolf) August 10, 2019

And the LPGA’s Christina Kim had a pretty funny jab at the former physics major:

He must have failed to denote the fact that after TWO MINUTES the earth’s turned on its axis and thus had an effect on the gravitational pull on the slope of the putt. Then he pushed it. https://t.co/QeHSJhCTNQ pic.twitter.com/3fYOmXLfZv

— Christina Kim (@TheChristinaKim) August 10, 2019

Kim also noted the LPGA has assessed some slow-play penalties this year (Sounds like a good idea!), and she was impressed by Thomas hanging in there as he did. Thomas acknowledged it wasn’t easy:

It was hard to!

— Justin Thomas (@JustinThomas34) August 10, 2019

Of course, DeChambeau isn’t the only slow player out there. Others like J.B. Holmes, Ben Crane, and Kevin Na have been harshly criticised through the years, but these videos of the five-time PGA Tour winner are particularly damning. DeChambeau has defended his pace of play in the past in part by saying he walks faster to his golf ball, which allows him more time once he arrives there. You don’t have to be a physics major, though, to know that math isn’t adding up.

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