Written by Stephen Moloney (@TheCheeky9)
If there was one topic which dominated golf this year … it was that black and white polo shirt Nike made for the Open at Royal Portrush. I mean, not since Tiger Woods first debuted “the mock turtleneck” back in the early 00’s has a shirt created such a stir in the game of golf. It divided families; created irreparable fissures in decades-long friendships; and saw mass brawls breaking out in clubhouse bars around the world. Frankly, we were lucky to come out of it without any casualties.
When we weren’t talking about that, though – thanks, in no small part, to the peace talks – the issue of “slow play” has probably gotten more airtime and drawn more keystrokes this year than it has done in quite a while. And, amazingly, for something that, at a cursory glance, you’d think should be one of the most ‘cut and dry’ of issues to remedy, after digesting some articles and videos over the last few months where “slow play” has been discussed … well, I’ve come to the conclusion that apparently it’s not.
From a sense of hopelessness amongst those calling for change who think the relevant bodies in charge aren’t serious enough about truly tackling the problem; to a stubbornness amongst some of the more … “methodical professionals”, shall we say, who reckon that, because this is their career and their livelihood, they should be able to take as much time as they want, truthfully, to look at the situation as it currently stands, with people on both sides of the debate having tied themselves up into knots trying to figure out how best to solve the problem, slow play, in a way, has become golf’s very own Brexit.
Yet, just like saying to the Tories, “Here, would ye not just have another referendum, no? Like, just to be sure sure?” the obvious solution of actually penalising players with penalty shots when they fall off the pace and implementing an official ‘shot clock’ into the game seems to have either fallen on deaf ears or been made out to be extremely complicated.
However, as opposed to presenting you with yet another long-winded think-piece that’s essentially a typed shrug, I, like Boris Johnson and the backstop, am going to give you my vision – or elevator pitch – for how to address the issue of slow play in professional golf; but, unlike Boris Johnson and the backstop, said ‘vision’ is actually going to contain some detailed, fleshed out ideas and not just vague references to “technology” followed by faux-inspirational platitudes like, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
Now, before I tell you exactly how I’m going to revolutionise professional golf and set myself on the path to having marquee tournaments named after me around the world, when I initially set out to write this pitch, I had originally intended to write about two ideas to try and speed up the sometimes glacial pace at which professional golf is played nowadays. However, why I decided to ultimately cut one of those ideas – one which boiled down to placing timing gates at the entrances to each tee box at a tournament so as to make it abundantly clear what groups are falling off the pace, where on the course they’re falling off it and by exactly how much, thereby eliminating the need for that “official” shot clock I mentioned – is because even with all that information at a referee’s disposal, he/she would still wind up playing out the exact same problematic scenario as exists now, wherein they would tell a group they’re on the clock, give them a chance to catch up, and then, if they don’t do that, try to figure out which of the group should get a penalty.
Essentially, it would be like having a problem with birds sitting on the power-lines behind your house and using your slabbed patio as a canvas for their tributes to Jackson Pollock; and to try and then deal with that problem, you employ a piece of technology which tells you how many birds on average sit on the powerlines, what type of birds they are, and what time of the day they tend to be “most inspired” – sure, you end up knowing more about the problem, but, in reality, you’re still going to have to go out there and start clapping your hands at them like you’re giving them a round of applause in the hopes their innate ‘bashfulness’ kicks in and they fly off … i.e. the technology hasn’t actually solved anything.
So, instead, let me pitch to you my other idea. And that idea is … an official shot clock … just not the one you’re thinking about.
See, I think for a lot of people when they hear “shot clock” mentioned in relation to golf, they think of the ones they’ve seen placed on tee-boxes or on the back of a golf cart at the ‘GolfSixes’ event on the European Tour. And when those people then try to imagine how those clocks would possibly look as a permanent fixture out on tour and, most importantly, at Majors, they just don’t think they’d look right … and I 100% agree. They wouldn’t. What I think would work, though, is that if, in amongst that group of volunteers who follow each group over the course of a tournament, as well as having the ‘standard bearer’ or ‘walking scorer’, you also had a ‘timekeeper’.
And, unsurprisingly, part of this timekeeper’s job would entail putting fifty seconds on a stop watch (ten more than the “standard” allotted time, depending where online you look) and setting it running for each player as soon as it’s their turn to hit. That way you’re not forced to have shot clocks on tees, nor “mobile clock buggies” positioned on fairways, meaning everything from a visual standpoint stays the exact same as it is now, but the players would know, without question, that they’re on the clock.
“BUT WHAT IF FIFTY SECONDS ISN’T ENOUGH?!” I hear you desperately screaming? Well, first of all, it should be; but, secondly, that’s where the other part of a timekeeper’s job would come into play.
On the Thursday and Friday of a tournament, every player in the field would be granted three time extensions to use, if needed, over the course of each of the first two rounds. These extensions, governed and monitored by each group’s individual timekeeper, would grant a player an extra twenty seconds on top of their pre-designated fifty if, for example, they were having trouble deciding on what club to pull, deciphering what type of shot to play or waiting out a particularly strong gust of wind. On top of that, come the weekend, the last two groups in the field, i.e. the leaders, would have their previous two days work rewarded with extra time extensions, with the second-to-last group now receiving four extensions, and the last group out receiving a very generous and very tasty five.
See? It’s all very elegant and simple, isn’t it? There’d be no massive upheavals to the game as we know it, and everything is perfectly transparent and easy to understand – so, job done, yeah?
Not quite.
Because if I want those tournaments after me, I need this whole thing completely untouchable. It has to be like a new dam – no cracks, no leaks. So, let’s do some tidying up.
The biggest argument that would come against the shot clock is that the first player in a group to hit their second shot on a par 4 or par 5 would be at a disadvantage if their fifty seconds were to start as soon as they reach their ball, because they and their caddie wouldn’t have as much time as the others in the group to calculate yardage etc. – and that’s absolutely correct.
Without using rangefinders, it takes time for a caddy to get together the various information they need to work out what club their player should hit based on where they are. And, generally, this could mean measuring out yardages from certain points in the fairway, referencing the extensive notes they would have taken during practice rounds and then correlating all that together into a concise piece of information that accurately tells their player what club they need to confidently attack a green with. It’s a time consuming process – and that’s when they find themselves in the middle of the fairway. If their player inadvertently chooses to send their ball on the ‘road-less-travelled’, working out the exact same information suddenly gets made exponentially more difficult because, more-often-than-not, caddies don’t spend a lot of time Monday to Wednesday factoring in a possible yardage if their player hooks a drive fifty yards left of the fairway and their ball comes to a stop in some guy’s half-drunk pint of Smithwick’s who’s sitting out on the balcony of a hospitality tent nursing a touch of sunstroke.
Therefore, what’s my suggestion for how to handle this situation and ensure a level playing field for all players? Simple. As players and their caddies are leaving the tee box of a par 4 or 5, just like the graphic we watching at home would get, they would be told (and possibly shown) where their tee shot has gone and how far it’s gone.
So, for example, I’m a player on the European Tour and I’ve just teed off on a 457 yard long par 4. As we’re leaving the tee box, my caddy and I are made aware that I have driven my ball 296 yards and it’s come to a stop in the right semi. Now, all of a sudden, in the time it’ll take us to cover the near 300 yards between the tee box and my ball, we can figure out all the yardages we could want, plus have a working idea as to what club I’m going to hit based on whichever one of those numbers I want to work with; what we can feel the wind is doing from where we are; and on an assumption that we’ll have an unproblematic lie.
That way, when we finally arrive at my ball – and let’s say both my partners have out-driven me and the green ahead is clear – in the space of ten/fifteen seconds of my allotted fifty, my caddy and I can quickly and easily see if the plan of attack we concocted whilst enroute to my ball is a goer, or if we employ the backup option we also had time to come up with. No mess. No fuss. But, most importantly, no wasting time – and I even think that would be the case if such a system were employed at Majors, where, as we all know, due to the higher stakes, the pace of play can be painfully slow.
Now, look, would the obvious arguments of, “Sure, if you tell players how far they’ve hit it, you may as well just get rid of caddies altogether and give them trollies” and “Sure, if players can work out the exact yardage they have, it’ll make the game too simple for them” inevitably follow if such a system were ever implemented? Of course. But to those arguments I would merely say the following:
One, caddies are more than just human rangefinders for players; they’re a second set of eyes, they’re a sports psychologist, they’re a nutritionist, or, if needed, even a distraction. Also, just because it would be easier for players to work out yardages themselves within this new system, that doesn’t mean they’d necessarily want to – as my idea of hell in primary school were the words, “Alright, take out your maths books”, you can imagine how I’d feel about it.
And, two, you can create an environment where a player is able to get the exact yardage they need for a particular shot, but the fact is they still have to then go and execute said shot – like, it doesn’t make anything easier. I mean, if knowing the exact yardage on a hole guaranteed success, why is it that players still manage to make an absolute hames of par 3’s on a weekly basis? Golf isn’t hard because of working out what club to hit; it’s hard because of what you have to do with the club once you do.
So, there it is, my pitch for how to best solve the problem of slow play in professional golf. Is the irony lost on me that a piece about speeding up golf ended up being a two thousand word behemoth? No.
But it’s not my fault.
Blame the group ahead.