How to cure the bane of slow play in golf

[ASFN Admin]

The scourge of slow play is back on golf's agenda after a glacial final day at the WGC Dell World Match Play in Texas on Sunday. The sloth-like pace of Billy Horschel and Scottie Scheffler in the final attracted widespread criticism from figures such as Colin Montgomerie, Catriona Matthew and Sky Sports commentator Ewen Murray. The rise of Bryson DeChambeau, for all his undoubted excellence, has also prompted discussions about pace of play with the American's fastidious shot preparation frustrating some viewers. At the 2019 Masters, DeChambeau was roundly condemned for taking more than two minutes to line up an 11-foot putt. DeChambeau's scientific 'vector putting' method also makes use of green books, which record every undulation and borrow on each green in great detail, and these guides are now commonplace on Tour and frequently blamed for slow play. So what can be done to address the problem? Telegraph Sport offers some potential solutions. Stricter punishments It's a familiar concept from various spheres of life: if you want to discourage patterns of behaviour then offer a serious deterrent. Fans grew frustrated with the PGA Tour's reluctance to issue stroke-penalties for slow play, relying too much on a system of warnings and fines. Given the average PGA Tour player has a figure resembling a telephone number in their bank account, financial punishments are unlikely to cause much concern. In fairness, the PGA Tour did announce a new, more stringent pace-of-play policy at the start of 2020. This involved keeping an unpublished list of its slowest players based on timings from data provider ShotLink. Players go on and off the list based on a 10-tournament rolling period and are expected to meet a 60-second average for all shots. If they take more than this, they can be 'put on the clock' independently from their rest of their playing group. They also introduced the concept of an Excessive Shot Time, to be issued if any player takes more than two minutes to hit a shot without good reason. If a player does this twice within the same tournament, officials have the option to issue a one-stroke penalty. Previously, players had a clean slate at the start of each round, now they are judged across a tournament.

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