How Much of a Problem Was Slow Play at The AIG Women's Open

If it took you six hours to complete 18 holes of golf would you ever take to the course again? I didn’t think so. Me neither.

I now play senior golf and have accepted that I am going to be out there for four hours. And I believe that is still too long. I played a singles knockout match on Friday and my opponent seemed to be totally oblivious to the fact that you have three minutes to look for a golf ball. On at least three occasions he exceed that limit by at least five minutes. I struggled to contain my frustration.

We did manage to get round in just under four hours - as a two ball! You can share your experiences in our new Golf Pace of Play Survey.

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But will somebody please explain to me how it can possibly be acceptable for competitors at the Women’s Open to be allowed to take over six hours to get round? Time and again I watched players backing off shots, taking an interminable time to play shots and line up putts. It was like watching paint dry. In fact, I think that I would rather have watched paint dry.

We routinely saw groups getting to a tee and finding the group ahead still waiting to play. That was bad enough, but at the par-three 11th  there were FOUR groups on the tee.

I listened to Mel Reid talking about how good it was that women’s golf is now receiving the coverage it deserves. I don’t know what world she is living in.

Let’s put the issue of slow play to one side for a moment. This is a women’s major, the biggest women’s tournament staged in Britain. So why on earth did Sky’s live coverage not start until midday?

Their coverage of The Open Championship saw them on air for the first shot of the day and it continued until the final putt was holed. So why the limited coverage at St Andrews?

I also have to say that I was very disappointed to see such sparse crowds. (Almost 53,000 attended the week at the Old Course, up slightly on last year's event at Walton Heath, and significantly improved on the 33,000 at Muirfield in 2022). If you want to watch The Open you have to enter a ballot for tickets - and they sell out in double-quick time, with tens of thousands of people left disappointed every year. You could still get tickets for the Women’s Open on the final day.

So why is it that, despite Reid’s assertion, the women’s game fails to capture the imagination in the same way as its male equivalent?

There are those who will tell you that it is because of a lack of personalities but I simply don’t buy that. Nelly Korda is a hugely gifted and entertaining golfer, head and shoulders above her rivals. There is never a dull minute when Charley Hull is involved. And she is a thrilling golfer, somebody who knows only one way to play the game - and that is to attack. 

Leona Maguire, Linn Grant, Maja Stark…the list goes on and on. We have a Solheim Cup in America just around the corner. It will attract huge crowds, proper TV coverage and a European team looking to retain the trophy on US soil. There will be drama, there will be trills and there will be controversy - there always is.

But we should also have been seeing all of that at St Andrews. 

I am utterly convinced that the root of the problems lies in the funereal pace of play. Six hours is unacceptable. To put this in perspective, it represents 20 minutes to play each and every hole.

I have addressed this problem before and I keep coming back to the same argument - the powers-that-be have it within their gift to penalise slow play but they never do. The rules state that a golfer has 40 seconds to play a shot from the moment they get to the ball. It has to be said that the likes of Korda and Hull are like a breath of fresh air, individuals who just like to get on with it. So goodness knows how they felt about the length of their rounds.

I remain convinced that if players were properly penalised for slow play that the message would quickly get through. If women’s golf is serious about attracting new fans this is an issue that must be addressed.