Question of the week [December 9-15]: The First Call's Gary Van Sickle wrote about professional golf's pace-of-play issue and the Shot Clock Masters. How do you believe the issue should be addressed?
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Enough already.
You have 40 seconds to play. They need to start tracking each player on every hole. One person following the group, timestamp when the first player tees off. Timestamp the next player's shot. Then you timestamp when every player hits their shot. It should become apparent who the slow players are and how long they take to play. When they go to sign their scorecard show them the data and if necessary hit them with a one-stroke penalty for playing slow that day.
PGA Tour, LPGA, Korn Ferry, colleges ... it's nuts how long they take. All that impacts private clubs and public courses around the country. Put in a comment section for searching for a lost ball, penalty drop, weather delay, etc. in case there are delays that need to be accounted for.
Call Maverick McNealy, he could figure it out.
Kirby Laughlin
Gibsonia, Pennsylvania
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Perhaps if they enforced the rules already on the books, they could help improve the pace of play. They allow guys like Keegan Bradley to mark, re-mark, do a form of the cha cha dance before putting. Speaking of marking, I've see pros mark from inches away to realign the ball, etc. Madness. Just tap it in.
The pros are fairly insecure and have mental, as well as swing, coaches. Guys like Max Homa go through a grueling process before each shot. Why they need to start that after their playing partner has hit rather than while he’s hitting is a mystery. Of course, the announcers actually applaud the pro who restarts his process after a train whistle or faint applause from five holes away. The horror.
On the LPGA, other than Nelly Korda the pace is snail-like. The pros are far too reliant on their caddies and engage in lengthy discussions
before pulling a club. They all want to copy Phil Mickelson and Bones [Jim Mackay] who started this trend. Their lack of confidence and mental toughness is shocking for world-class athletes.
On the PGA Tour, now with smaller fields of multimillionaires, any monetary fines are meaningless. Stroke penalties perhaps. Even that probably won’t help. Coming in 15th or 25th still garners a six-figure check now that Mickelson allegedly forced bigger purses and the players decided to shrink the fields. The LPGA isn’t as greedy and has bigger fields, and a monetary fine could be a significant incentive to speed things up. Hard to say.
I doubt much will change. There’s no real appetite among the ones with any real power to enact change. They could have done it already if
they really wanted to.
Vinny Mooney
Poughkeepsie, New York
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I believe that during a tournament there should first be a warning and the player or players put on the clock. If the pace doesn’t improve, a one-stroke penalty should be imposed. If the pace still doesn’t improve, then a two-stroke penalty and a monetary fine. The pace of play infractions should then be placed on the players permanent record so that in the future, if the player is cited for slow play again in another tournament, the penalty is doubled and the player is disqualified. There is simply no reason why a round can’t be completed in four hours, give or take a few minutes.
Chuck Dunlap
Lexington, South Carolina
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Front: Soren Kjeldsen on the clock during the first round of the 2018 Shot Clock Masters at Diamond Country Club in Vienna, Austria.
Photo: Phil Inglis | Golffile