If My Game Doesn't Improve, My Vocabulary Will Have To

I'm running out of words that describe my days on the golf course. Frustrating, dissapointing, challenging, horrendous, tough, and horrible just don't cut it anymore. I'd like to use positive words like wonderful, exciting, fun, phenomenal, and peachy to explain my rounds; I just can't.

Physically my golf game was ready to go today. Thanks to a good week of practice and good warm-up session before the round, I felt very upbeat about finally putting all the pieces together. Any glue that was holding those pieces together melted on the first hole and I couldn't recover. That glue, was my mental game. My focus was thrown off on the first hole and I battled to get refocused, but I had a really tough time ignoring outside forces: mainly my playing partners.

NOTE: It's a terrible excuse to blaim poor golf on anybody but yourself and I'm not doing that, but I am going to explain what made me as mad as Joe Mikulik.

First let me explain a double standard that exists in the golf world when you are a fast player. On all levels of competitive golf tournaments, pace of play is a major concern for the officials. Nobody enjoys playing 18 holes in 5 or 6 hours, so most tournaments set up a 4.5 hour time limit. However, most players laugh at this because:
1) Rarely does the first group even finish in that amount of time making it impossible for the groups behind them to do it
2) Even if you do fall behind the 4.5 hour pace, I've only known one player who actually got penalized for slow play (That's in over 15 years of tournament golf)

Now, I am a fast player. In fact at times, I've played too fast and I've worked on slowing down so I don't have to wait as much or so that I don't disrupt my playing partners. So, despite having played only one round on the Hooters Tour under 5 hours (and that one took 4 hours 45 minutes), why am I slowing down? The best answer for that question is because slow players don't care that they are slow and aren't affraid to play slow. They know they'll be given at least one warning if not two about being behind the pace of play. The group then has a few holes to catch back up; at which point they will be put on the clock (if necessary). Slow players know it takes about 7 or 8 holes of being out of position before they will actually have to speed up. By the time a group finds itself out of position they're probably a few holes into the round, so by the time a slow player and his group might finally be put on the clock they're on hole #16 or later. Now that the group is on the clock, the slow player only has to speed up for the final few holes and it's not like they have to speed up a lot. You're given 40 seconds to hit your shot when you on the clock. That's an eternity. Take a break and come back in 40 seconds.....I'll still be here.

...1

....2

.....3

.......

........

.........

..........

...........40!!

Did you make a sandwich, take out the garbage, or make a phone call? Maybe you did all three?? That's how long we have to take practice swings, figure out the wind, and hit the shot.

Prior to being put on the clock, the fast players (myself included) are forced to deal with slow player in the group. If I try to get him moving faster a common retort is, "Well, the officials haven't warned us yet." It's the worst when a slow player has the honor on the tee. Since they're slow, they are usually the last one to the tee and take the longest time to decide what club to hit, but they're hitting first. Stealing his honor would be a very rude thing to do. It isn't any better when I have the honor. If I get to the tee first, figure out what club to hit, and hit my shot all before the slow player even gets to the tee I am once again seen as having poor ettiquette. Basically the fast player is at mercy of a slow player and left with hope that an official will warn the slow player early in the round.

If you don't believe me that a fast player is at the mercy of slow play and that taking actions into our own hands is seen as rude, read this article about Rory Sabbatini (fast player) and his encounter with Ben Crane (very slow player). Some people understood what Rory did and acceppted it, but he had to issue an official apology later. (Search Rory Sabbatini Rude on Google and see how many articles come up)

So what can be done? On the Hooters Tour, not much. If officials started enforcing slow play on a very strict manner, players would have a conniption about being penalized. If the enforcement continued, players might decide not to play Hooters Tour events because they'd be affraid to be penalized. The Hooters Tour is just a mini-tour and its survival depends on getting people to play regardless of their pace of play or their ability.

The real solution for this slow play double standard needs to start at the top: PGA Tour. In 2003 and in 2006, the PGA Tour implemented a new pace of play policy, but still to this day we hear players complaining about nobody enforcing the policy. Rory Sabbattini is still fighting to make a change, but he is becoming an outcast because of it. Maybe if the biggest tour in the world began enforcing the problem of slow play a trickle down effect would occur.

Will this occur in my lifetime??..........................No way.

I guess I'll just have to find a way to push slow players into playing faster without getting a smarty comeback from the player or without the player thinking I'm Rory Sabbattini.

I'd rather find a solution to the Poincaré Conjecture.

77
Neil