BY lewine mair
The news has suddenly started to slip out that the LPGA could be the first of the professional tours to adhere to a new set of rules regarding pace of play. When it comes to the Ford Championship, which begins on March 27, there should be a revving up of engines to an extent where our slow and sleepy game will have to wake up.
Among the minutia of the new policy circulated to players last week was this statement:
“Under the previous policy in 2024, 22 athletes received a fine and 9 received a two-stroke penalty. If this new policy had been in place last season, 23 players would have received a one-stroke penalty, and 8 would have received a two-stroke penalty.”
The above will come as music to the ears of Dame Laura Davies, the four-time major winner and Sky Sports commentator who has been crying out for penalty shots ahead of fines for years.
... in their dealings with referees, the slowcoaches among the women cannot expect the sensitive touch at this likely turning point on their tour.
Only a week or so ago, she was reiterating that most of the slowcoaches in the professional game were nowadays making so much money that they no longer cared a jot about being handed one more fine.
“For them to start caring,” she maintained, “it has to be penalty shots.”
When Davies won her first major, the 1987 US Women’s Open at Plainfield, JoAnne Carner, whom she defeated in a three-way playoff otherwise involving Ayako Okamoto, could not but be amused by the long-hitting Englishwoman. “Laura,” she said, “plays golf at a speed to suggest that she’s got something better to do.”
Davies’s explanation has never changed: “That’s how I’ve always played and how I always will.”
It so happens she is a good friend of Carlota Ciganda, the Spaniard whose name comes up in everyone’s slow-play conversations. “I’ve discussed it with Carlota,” she said, “and I believe that she tries harder than most to pick up speed. At times, she wonders if it is the slow preshot routine she learned in her early golfing days which comes back when she’s under pressure.”
Ciganda, of course, is by no means the only European to have had trouble with preshot routines.
It’s not too long ago that Sergio García would find himself gripping and regripping his driver a dozen times or more. For García, it was a touchy subject, at least until Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie threw in a touch of humour. After seeing the player’s ball tumble from the tee peg at the very last moment in a US Open practice round, Monty asked, “Are we going to have to go through all that again?”
“Yes,” returned García, “but it will be worth it.” (The eventual solution was for him to try for one fewer regrip every day.)
Davies conceded you had to feel sorry for those who struggled to pull the trigger while adding that if and when it became crucial for them to do as much – which seems to be about to happen – they would eventually master the art.
Last year’s AIG Women’s British Open at St Andrews will be remembered for the way Lydia Ko, who had already bagged the ’24 Olympic gold medal, signed off par-birdie to finish two clear of Nelly Korda, Jiyai Shin and Lilia Vu, the trio with whom she had been level when she was standing on the 17th tee.
It was lucky Ko was the runaway favourite at St Andrews. Had it been anyone else in her position, you doubt whether too many of the spectators would have hung around for the prizegiving. Would you believe that it took 45 minutes for the final groups – Jenny Shin and Korda and Vu and Jiyai Shin — to follow Ko and Alexa Pano up the 18th?
For a Women’s British Open where slow play did even more to divest a major of excitement, what of Turnberry in 2015? The winner was Inbee Park, and far and away her strongest suits were the way in which she coped with the worst of the weather and how she handled what were often six-hour rounds. On one occasion, when her playing companion was all over the place, she stood by the side of the green with the patience of a mother collecting a small child from school.
Craig Connelly, an award-winning caddie, has made the very valid point that women tend to ask a very different set of questions to their opposite numbers.
“When you’re working with the men” – Connelly has caddied for all of Colin Montgomerie, Paul Casey and Martin Kaymer – “you can say what you think straight out and without giving offence. With the women” – he started off his caddying career with Scotland’s Dale Reid – “you have to pick your words with care because they’re mostly pretty sensitive. It’s more of a brother-sister relationship if you like.”
However, in their dealings with referees, the slowcoaches among the women cannot expect the sensitive touch at this likely turning point on their tour. As far as Davies is concerned, they, no less than the men, need to be properly disciplined.
“Hit them with penalty shots,” she said, “and you’re going to affect their heads as well as their scores.”
Who can wait for the forthcoming Ford Championship to see how the snail’s-pace contingent face up to that little lot?