It’s no secret most people despise slow play, but you know who dislikes it the most? The fast players who have to deal with it.
Pace of play has always been a hot topic in pro golf, and recently the LPGA announced changes to try and speed up play on its tour. We’ll see if that help when the LPGA puts them into place at the Ford Championship on March 27, but for now, everyone has opinions. Many have solutions, too.
Sam Burns, who is one of the faster players on Tour, was the guest on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar podcast, and he explained the “multiple problems” that come with slow play.
For starters, he said, when playing in threesomes, there’s sometimes little incentive to play fast, since most golfers know they’ll eventually have to wait at some point anyway. Although he did estimate golfers play each shot about five seconds faster while in twosomes since there is less waiting in your group in general.
“How much can we really speed up in threesomes, maybe 10 or 15 minutes?” Burns said. “Well, what’s the point of that? That’s not going to do much, but when we play in twos and it’s four hours, that’s a big difference.
“I think certain guys are slow and it’s frustrating because when I play with those guys and it’s their turn to hit, it’s like, What have you even been doing the last minute and a half? You don’t even have your number yet, you don’t know what club you are going to hit, I don’t understand.”
Burns said the problem is difficult to solve because there are so many factors, like field size, the difference between twosomes and threesomes and slow individuals.
“I will say, there’s no reason you should have four times to get fined, for starters,” he said. “I also think fines to a lot of guys doesn’t mean anything. You can fine a guy $50,000 and he doesn’t really care that much. You start taking FedEx Cup points away and that is going to mean a lot more to somebody. If we really want to fix the pace-of-play thing — and I think it’s a bigger issue that signaling out people — the penalties should be a lot more severe than just a monetary value. I think they should be FedEx Cup points, possibly getting demoted from your tee time category and on and on. But that gets back to the point of if we can only speed up 10 or 15 minutes, what’s that worth?”
Burns did have one rather bold solution, though. He said everyone — players, rules officials, etc. — knows who is fast and who is slow. So why can’t the slow players be singled out right away?
“If we are really serious about this, why aren’t we as soon as the slow player tees off, put him on the clock and let him know he’s on the clock,” Burns said. “You think he’s going to continue to play slow if you know he’s on the clock? I don’t think so. We know you are slow, but why are we just waiting until something happens or your group gets behind to do something? Because if I’m playing with two slow guys and we get put on the clock and let’s say I have a ruling or bad hole or something, then all of a sudden I’m trying to make up time because these guys got us on the clock, and it’s not really me. So I think that can be frustrating for guys who are typically fast players.”
