'How England Golf's yellow cards are tackling blight of slow play'
2025-02-03
Category: sports

Even the most exhilarating of wins can be made to feel a tad turgid because of the ways of modern professional golf.Rory McIlroy showed why he is such an electrifying talent with his biggest win of recent years at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am last week. A magnificent performance, befitting its setting at one of the great golfing venues.It should have been captivating sport, glueing bums to seats for its duration. The Californian coastal course is one of those where the viewer should want to see every hole.But to follow this final round from start to finish required the patience of a saint. It was brunch to almost dinner Stateside on a precious weekend day.The final threeball teed off at 10:15 local time. Here in the UK this was teatime to bedtime, to witness the end of a potentially significant McIlroy win.It was closed out just shy of five and a half hours after his final round began. And this was by no means the worst of it in recent weeks.
But the final group of McIlroy, Shane Lowry and Sepp Straka were regularly held up by the group in front, with Tom Kim particularly culpable.The young Korean - regarded as one of the game's exciting prospects - took so long over so many shots, including his second to the sixth which he sprayed into the ocean.But, intriguingly, the answer to this blight on the sport might not lie entirely with how long an individual shot takes.This is evidenced by an initiative pioneered at top amateur tournaments in England last year. Threeball round times at the most prestigious championships invariably beat the four and half hour mark.Some will say that is still too slow, but realistically over 7,000-yard golf courses set up to test the best, that is a reasonable timeframe."Fortunately the game is taking notice and I think we have a pretty good control over it," James Crampton, England Golf's director of championships told BBC Sport.An important change, brought in last year, was to create a number of "pace of play stations" at various points around the course. Each group is required to hit those times to avoid being hit where it hurts most - on their scorecard."Instead of us monitoring a golfer in terms of the amount of time they individually take to hit a shot, we're actually monitoring the time as to how long they take to play a hole," Crampton explained."We allocate three or four pace of play stations throughout the round and the threeball is required to meet those checkpoints at the allotted time. If they fail to do that, they're given what we effectively call a yellow card."And then they are required to make the next one. If they fail to do that, then all three in the group would be penalised a stroke."No golfer suffered such a penalty last season, although several players came close. During the English Amateur some competitors could be seen running down the fairways of Seaton Carew to make their checkpoint time.But, in short, it seems to work. "They're not focusing just on how long it takes them to hit a shot, they're focusing on other things that take a lot of the time," Crampton added."There's been a change of attitude. They stand on that first tee, knowing they've got to make these pace of play stations."[Before] some people were being told by a referee to hurry on [but] they were ignored because the players knew no penalties were ever applied."Under the scheme, any group that has not lost ground on the golfers immediately in front of them cannot be punished. Likewise, lengthy rulings are accounted for, but players are incentivised to keep up."We are really keen for players to get an awareness as to how long it takes them to take a glove on and off, how long it takes them to look at the yardage, how long it takes them to walk to their ball," Crampton explained."We're not really bothered about how long it takes them to hit a shot. We just want to make sure that they play their hole."And all of those things that we are required to do to play golf, they do that in a reasonable time by meeting these pace of play stations."Slow play is a turn off at every level of the game. In the pro ranks, the DP World Tour has made progress and, refreshingly, LIV has imposed shot penalties.But the PGA Tour was seemingly oblivious and indulgent of its members, until commentators such as CBS's Dottie Pepper called out the slow coaches for a "lack of respect" last month.Nowadays the tour has investment from outsiders - the Strategic Sports Group - who want their stake to grow. So there is an imperative to improve "the product" and quickening proceedings can only help.They could start by playing final rounds in two rather than threeballs.England Golf's major events always include a 50-minute break between the morning and afternoon waves of starters which helps the flow of play throughout the day.This would be harder to achieve in pro events where two-tee starts are the norm, but Crampton believes his blueprint involving pace of play stations is transferable to the paid ranks."We're not putting a lot of pressure on the players," he added. "If a group is out of position, we don't then follow them down the side of the fairway in a buggy, (which is what happens in pro events when groups are 'put on the clock')."That can be quite off putting. We just let them go. We say, look, guys, this is where we are, we need you to get in that position and we're going to just let them play."So I don't see any reason why (it can't transfer to the pro game). I think we just have to potentially get away from this concept that slow play is all around how long it takes just to hit your shot."It is an interesting take on arguably the most pressing issue in the game.Last Sunday, it was undoubtedly worth staying up to see McIlroy's brilliant win, one that should have brought fresh eyeballs to the game - but the the fact is for most people it took far too long, diehards included.