Is This The Way to End Slow Play on Tour?

BY COMMON consent, slow play is the curse of golf at all levels. I can guarantee that if you asked 100 players to identify the one area of the sport that they would want to change then it would be putting an end to five-hour rounds of golf.

So how on earth do we solve the problem?

(Image Credit: Kevin Diss Photography)

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Both the LPGA and PGA Tour have announced this year that they intend to start imposing penalties on the worst culprits. While the PGA Tour continues to drag its heels, the women’s game is being rather more proactive.

At a qualifier for the US Women’s Open, nine players were hit with slow-play penalties. And for one of them, Aline Krauter, it nearly cost her a place in the field for the women’s major. She found herself in a seven-women playoff for the last remaining place in the qualifying field and birdied the first extra hole but ended up taking the first alternate position. Why? She was one of the nine players who received a one-shot penalty for slow play.

One group was actually penalised both in the morning round and again in the afternoon as a total of 12 penalty shots were handed out on the day.

It all ended well for Krauter when she received a phone call from the USGA to tell her that she was, after all, in the field.

But she was not happy, perhaps with good reason.

She said: “I feel great about being in the U.S. Open. To be fair, I always felt like I should be in the U.S. Open, based on my golf score, so it feels right. It seemed like we were running behind," said Krauter, "but it never seemed like we were out of position.”  

She said that she played ready golf the whole way, to the point she questioned whether or not she was rude when she went ahead with her shot from 30 yards ahead. On the 18th hole, their ninth of the day, Krauter told her group they needed to get a move on. When she got close to the green, her caddie went up to a volunteer official and asked if they were behind. She said no.

Once had finished the hole and given their scores, Krauter said the official told them they were a couple minutes behind.

As they made the turn to the first hole, a rules official stopped them to say they had missed their checkpoint on the 18th and that everyone in the group would receive a one-stroke penalty. Krauter told the official that the group in front of them was still on the green. By the following par three, they were waiting to hit their tee shot.behind.

So here is the problem. The entire group were on the clock and you have to say that Krauter has every good reason to feel aggrieved that she was penalised since it seems pretty obvious that it was he playing partners who were to blame.

Imagine Rory McIlroy being paired with Keegan Bradley and Jason Day, two of the slowest players on the PGA Tour.

McIlroy is one of the fastest players on tour but you can only complete a round as quickly as your playing partners allow you to. So if it took that group five hours and 30 minutes to play 18 holes, would McIlroy in any way be responsible for that? Clearly not. I am all for penalising golfers for slow play but there needs to be some common sense - and there was a lack of that at the Women’s US Open qualifier.

Speaking of common sense, my experience tells me that one of the chief reasons for slow play at club level is individuals failing to adhere to the three-minute rule when it comes to looking for golf balls. How many times have you stood on a tee waiting for ever for the group in front to finally admit defeat in the search for a lost ball? It drives me nuts.

I played in a team match at Rookery Park last week and one of our opponents came up with the perfect solution. When we started looked for a ball he got out his phone and set the timer at three minutes - if we hadn’t found the ball when it hit zero we moved on. And we completed a match that went all the way to the 18th hole in less than four hours.

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