SLOW POKES

Pace of play is the one blight on the game that trickles down from the professional Tours to grass roots club golf. At the elite level, slow play is frustrating for all from players to fans. Here, the man at the coalface of administering pro golf in Australia offers some solutions.

WORDS ANDREW LANGFORD-JONES

Slow play is probably golf’s most complex and frustrating issue. At both the amateur and professional level, we constantly here moans and groans on pace of play from players and spectators. As the Director of Tournaments for the Australasian PGA Tour, I am constantly asked, “Why put up with it?”, “Why don’t you do something?” and even just, “Penalise him!” Sadly, it’s not that easy. The PGA Tours of the world are all member-based organisations and, as such, are reluctant to introduce rules that may, in turn, come back to bite them. The two biggest problems are: 1. Size of fields; and 2. The system we have in place to eradicate slow play. A “normal” Tour event has 156 players – 78 in the morning and 78 in the afternoon. This means that, playing in threes, there…

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Golf Australia (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2019

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