Golf Vic Vol 60 No 2 2019

MIKE CLAYTON casts his eye over the game here and abroad and finds no quick fix for slow play but says the game in Victoria is in good shape. Golf Australia’s podcast Inside the Ropes host Andy Maher jokingly announced a year or so ago the introduction of a Roger Bannister award for egregious examples of playing golf at about the same rate as soil erosion. Bannister, the first man to run the mile in under four minutes, did it quicker than it took J.B. Holmes to play his long second shot into the 72nd hole at Torrey Pines in what used to be called the San Diego Open. Worse, Holmes eschewed the challenge of flying the pond in front of the green and eventually chose instead to lay up short. Given he needed an eagle to tie, it was a pretty amazing decision. The same J.B. Holmes won earlier this year at Riviera in what was the Los Angeles Open when Ben Hogan and Sam Snead were winning it and again he played his role as the tour’s resident tortoise to perfection as he ground his way in due course to the trophy. Slow play is hardly a new problem. Cary Middlecoff, Snead’s partner at the 1959 Canada Cup at Royal Melbourne, was from all accounts torturously slow and Jack Nicklaus was deliberate at best. Bernhard Langer and Peter Fowler likewise were hardly speed merchants. Players have been bleating forever about slow play and we are a long way from the 36-hole final day of the 1926 Open Championship at Royal Lytham when Bobby Jones and Al Watrous teed off just after nine o’clock in the morning, walked back to the hotel for lunch, and arrived back for their just- after-one- o’clock afternoon tee time. Lest you think they were fooling around miles behind the leaders, Jones beat Watrous by a shot and won the championship. Jones wasn’t playing for any money and its presence – or rather the staggering amounts of it in the game – is an oft-used excuse for the pace of play problem. I’m not sure why taking longer makes you any more likely to play a good shot or better golf and many times the opposite is the case. Lanny Wadkins, one of the best American players in the 1970s and 80s, was closer to Usain Bolt than Bannister and our own Matt Jones isn’t one to wait around, something making him an engaging player to watch. The new rules of golf introduced a recommendation encouraging players to play efficiently between shots and holes. Rule 5.6 also states “a player should make a stroke in no more than 40 seconds (and usually in less time).” A recommendation in this instance for PGA Tour players is about as useless as a 1.62 inch surlyn-covered Top Flite (great into the wind but essentially a rock) used to be into the third green on the West at Royal Melbourne when the wind was behind. You were as sure to be off the back of the green with that ball as a tour player is sure of not being penalised for taking double or triple the recommended 40 seconds to play a shot. One thing for certain is in 30 years the same pace of play debate will be going on and not too much will have been achieved. Unless, of course, the Tours, the players and the rule makers get serious – and the only way it’s going to happen is if the television money dries up as the game grinds to a halt. BETTER GOLF – IT’S ALL by Mike Clayton @MichaelClayto15 clayton tees off 14 Golf Victoria