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Scrolling through some tweets and Facebook messages the other day I came across this one from Justin Thomas to Mike, his father. “Happy 60th pops. Thanks for being the best dad, role model and friend any son could ask for … ” It is easy to imagine the pride Mike Thomas felt at receiving such a warm and public accolade from his son.
A story about Shane Lowry might be all you need to know about the Open champion. His invitation to attend Rory McIlroy’s 2017 wedding, at which there would have been many friends and colleagues, coincided with a party to mark his grandmother’s 80th birthday. Which invitation do you think he accepted? “My gran’s,” he said. “I’m Irish. Family is very important.”
Listen to Jordan Spieth talk about his sister. In fact, listen to him talk about almost anything. He is, as they say, very sound. Not long ago I asked McIlroy (above) what Spieth was like as a person, not a golfer. “Not to be too sentimental but good as he is as a player, he is even better as a person,” McIlroy replied.
What do these anecdotes tell you? That some of the stars of our ancient game are rounded and well balanced, worthy of being role models in a game sometimes overburdened by pettifogging rules and old-fashioned traditions. Though there are exceptions, golf is fortunate in that many of its leading players carry themselves with dignity and conduct themselves with propriety.
Because of the regard in which they are held as people, not just golfers, they are listened to. At the 2016 Ryder Cup Justin Rose said that the Hazeltine National course setup was too easy and there were too many drive-and-wedge holes such as the 18th. Such is Rose’s standing in the game that people sat up and paid attention. There were not many easy holes in the 2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National.
Yet why is it that when leading golfers not known for making intemperate comments speak with one voice about slow play, little or nothing seems to be done?
Surely, all doubts that slow play is a bad thing and a curse on the modern game have gone now. Golf is less popular than it once was and has an image on social media that is less than flattering because, among other things, of the length of time it takes to play.
A random tweeter put his finger on it last week when he described the game as “a snoozefest” and another neatly skewered exactly why the game is losing the popularity it once had.
He wrote of golf: “ … a game which has fees, equipment costs and time requirements that most cannot meet.” How right he is. Many who could and did once can’t and won’t now.
Slow play by the best in the game sets a bad example for juniors and amateurs. “People love golf when their round goes smoothly and hate the experience when it all takes too long,” Bodo Sieber, the chief executive officer of Tagmarshal, the pace-of-play management system, was quoted as saying recently by Lewine Mair, my GGP colleague.
The speed of life is increasing. We eat, drink and work more quickly, more productively, or both. At least we try to. Why is playing golf getting slower? Five and a half hours for a round? More than two minutes to hit an 8-foot putt? Several minutes to pace out a 70-yard pitch shot?
Brooks Koepka hinted not very subtly that the speed of his playing partner JB Holmes at the Open was too slow. “It’s got out of hand,” Koepka said recently. “I take 15 seconds and go.”
In view of the remarks by McIlroy, Thomas, Koepka and others, why is it that the PGA Tour seems oblivious to the cacophony about slow play created on social media as well as to the comments by leading players? “I don’t think it’s fine to do nothing because it is genuinely a problem in our game,” McIlroy said.
The European Tour, in contrast (to the PGA Tour), is trying to do something. It claims to have the most aggressive pace monitoring in golf and hopes that not too far in the future every player will be timed on every shot on every hole.
Yet the PGA Tour appears unable or unwilling to grasp the detrimental effect slow play by some of its players is having on the general image of the game. “Who cares? It’s their game,” is the PGA Tour’s attitude to this curse of modern golf.
The European Tour, in contrast, is trying to do something. It claims to have the most aggressive pace monitoring in golf and hopes that not too far in the future every player will be timed on every shot on every hole. It already has had clocks on certain holes of certain tournaments to encourage players to prepare for their shots before they take up their stance.
New pace-of-play rules will come into effect on the European Tour next year. To a three-stage policy involving regulation, education and innovation will be added a fourth, which may be the best of the lot. Fields will be reduced in size. “We (the PGA Tour) should adopt these (rules),” Koepka said. “I’d love to see how many bad times guys get … slow players are breaking the rules.”
Since arriving from Canada, Keith Pelley, the European Tour’s chief executive, has insisted that golf is in the entertainment business. Golf is competing for eyeballs and thus money with new forms of cricket, an invigorated rugby union, the behemoth that is football in Europe and many other sports and activities. Golf once might have been one of the sports more widely participated in. It isn’t now. Cycling might be the new golf.
“The players have opened the door on slow play,” Pelley said recently. “ … This is now a light-bulb moment for our sport. It is incumbent on all of us involved in golf to act.”
The European Tour is. It is a mystery as to why the PGA Tour is not.
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