The PGA Tour should take a playing lesson from Major League Baseball.
America’s national pastime recognized that it had a problem with pace of play, and to its credit did something about it. This season, MLB installed a clock for pitchers and hitters, among other new initiatives designed to get the sport moving again after decades of steadily creeping game times. One month into the season, the effort is working. Nine-inning game times are averaging slightly more than 2½ hours, some 30 minutes on average faster than the slogs of recent years. Fans love it, and the reduced time spent on scratching, spitting, chewing and navel-gazing has done nothing to detract from the strategy inherent in the game.
The PGA Tour, with its round times for threesomes routinely approaching five hours and 36-hole cuts often spilling into Saturday, should take the hint, and quickly. There’s one big obstacle, though.
“I don’t think we have a problem with pace of play,” said Gary Young, who oversees rules and competitions at the PGA Tour. “Year in and year out, pace of play has been consistent. It didn’t suddenly get slower, but there’s always room for improvement. We try to change the habits of the slowest players and get them to be average with pace.”
In a phone interview, Young explained how the tour, armed with ShotLink data, focuses on the slowest 5 percent of players – no, he wouldn’t name names, but you might have a few candidates in mind – and prods them into changing their habits. The tour uses a progression of discipline that begins with a warning and a series of timings, all designed to get the offending player(s) and group back into position. Fines and penalties are a last resort, and the tour doesn’t publicize them. However, the reality of a slow-play penalty is remote. The last one was assessed to John Catlin at the 2021 PGA Championship (Rule 5.6b “Prompt Pace of Play”), and it came from Young.
“These guys are smart,” Young said. “They know the policy. They realize the magnitude of the one stroke.”
In 1968, baseball featured one of its most endearing seasons. ... “The year of the pitcher” created a storybook ending: a seven-game, all-afternoon World Series, capped by two of the best arms going the distance in Game 7. Detroit’s Mickey Lolich, on two days’ rest, outdueled St. Louis’ legendary Bob Gibson. Game time: 2 hours and 7 minutes. Pace, not paralysis. Rhythm, not rote.
Players not only know the policy; they helped write it as members of a self-governing organization. So, don’t blame Young. He’s merely enforcing what the tour wants. Any change would have to come from within. Despite recent player complaints about pace of play, there doesn’t appear to be enough support for stronger action.
“They’re playing for their livelihoods,” said Young, 57, a former touring pro and PGA member who has been with the tour for 16 years. “This is what they do to earn their livings. Let’s not lose sight of that because a few of them take extra time for an important shot. It’s irresponsible to expect that these guys are going to rush like a weekend golfer at that speed. And I never lose sight of that in my job.”
Young dismissed any comparison with MLB and its focus on game time, noting that baseball is played “in a fairly confined arena” with similar ballpark dimensions and “a controlled atmosphere” versus hundreds of acres devoted to golf.
Global Golf Post readers seem to think otherwise. In the “It’s Your Honor” feature a few pages deeper into this edition, supporters lined up behind recent slow-play commentary from GGP’s Ron Green Jr. and Jim Nugent. Before skipping ahead in the magazine, though, here’s a quick history lesson you might find relevant today.
In 1968, baseball featured one of its most endearing seasons. It was a divisive year for our nation – Vietnam, assassinations, race riots – but a seminal season for baseball.
“The year of the pitcher” created a storybook ending: a seven-game, all-afternoon World Series, capped by two of the best arms going the distance in Game 7. Detroit’s Mickey Lolich, on two days’ rest, outdueled St. Louis’ legendary Bob Gibson. Game time: 2 hours and 7 minutes. Pace, not paralysis. Rhythm, not rote.
Before this season, most baseball games in recent decades would have been in the fifth inning at the 2:07 mark. On the PGA Tour, they’d barely have made the turn.
Facing the loss of a generation of fans short on attention and long on entertainment options, baseball’s players and team owners – historically not the best of friends – came together. After a trial run in the minor leagues, MLB enacted a series of moves – 15-second clock on a pitcher, expanding to 20 seconds with runner(s) on base, and hitters must step into the batter’s box by the 8-second mark – to prod a game that wasn’t aging so well.
The penalty of an extra ball or strike in the pitch count, depending on whether the pitcher or hitter was at fault, offers tantalizing possibilities for a PGA Tour slow to penalize its own.
None of this would matter to the 99.99 percent of us who don’t play the game for a living except for one unfortunate reality: tour validation. The same emotional principle that prompts a recreational golfer to buy the gear used by the pros, in the hopes it will equate to better play, drives habits on the course. The AimPoint green-reading method popularized among touring pros has spread like kudzu across the game. Surely you cringed upon seeing juniors use it during the recent Drive, Chip and Putt at Augusta National. The fast-forward button on your DVR works as an antidote to the likes of Patrick Cantlay, but it can’t speed up that plodding foursome in front of you on Saturday morning.
It’s hardly a new problem. Fifty years ago, Golf Magazine did a cover story headlined “Trevino declares war on slow play.” Well, the quick-to-laugh, quicker-to-play Lee Trevino didn’t win that fight, as we know. With golf courses nearing 8,000 yards, greens Stimping at 13-plus and the advice of coaches, psychologists and caddies whispered into pros’ ears, the game is in retreat. Without a dramatic call to action such as what is happening in baseball, golf will be in the same dire straits 50 years from now.
So, here’s an idea for the PGA Tour: Fire back at LIV Golf and its brazen “golf, only louder” marketing pitch. Take a cue from MLB and get your tour moving again. Brand it as “golf, only faster.”
It would be a big hit with your fans.
E-MAIL STEVE
TOP PhotoS: Getty Images; Illustration: Barbara Ivins-Georgoudiou, Global Golf Post