US Edition
Carlton “Slugger” White’s attitude to slow play never made much sense when he worked on the PGA Tour.
The chief referee, with the Dallas moustache as bullish as his nickname, said he did not favour issuing penalty shots to the snails over fears he would “drastically affect the guy’s life with the click of a stopwatch.”
However, in every other area, Slugger was the arch stickler.
This bear of a man once burst into tears after disqualifying Kevin Stadler for playing with a slightly bent sand-wedge, knowing the golfer would probably lose his card as a result. “I always tried to keep it impersonal,” White said on his retirement three years ago. “There’s no face on a golf ball, right?”
I suppose there is a face on a stopwatch, but still, this blindspot of a good and decent character was at the very least inconsistent. Just like playing with a non-conforming club as Stadler did - completely unwittingly - was against the rules, so, too, is taking too damned long. Granted, it is difficult to police, but not nearly as difficult as the Tour makes out.
Consider the last man to receive a one-stroke penalty for slow play at a regular, individual PGA Tour event was Glen “All” Day - in 1995.
At the time, Slugger was barely a third into his 40-year stint and as he was vice president of rules and competition for the last third, he must be regarded as complicit in allowing the scourge to fester.
“I hate slow play, but I can’t agree with the idea of hitting players with penalty strokes,” White said. Think about it: he was head of rules, but was against enforcing those rules. Baffling.
Which brings us to the final round of the latest LIV event in Jeddah on Sunday. Adrian Meronk was penalised a stroke for taking two minutes over a shot. The Pole would have finished in a tie for fifth and won $750,000. Instead, he finished in a tie for sixth and won $502,000. It was the right and brave decision. And who is LIV’s chief referee? Slugger White. Equally baffling.
Or then, maybe not, because it is plainly in LIV’s masterplan to tackle the turtles. While the PGA Tour has gone more than 1,000 tournaments with no penalties, LIV has issued two in its last 10 events. Englishman Richard Bland fell foul of the timepiece at Valderrama last July.
This crusade should be applauded, but watch out if you do - you might be labelled a ‘Saudi shill’, as I was when welcoming Meronk’s sanction. Sigh. It should be possible to disagree with aspects of LIV while celebrating other features, just as it should surely be excusable to praise Greg Norman in this regard.
Like most great players - Bernhard Langer excepted - the LIV chief executive has long been an advocate of the officials enforcing the rules. Way back in 1992, Norman said: “I blame the officials, not the players … it’s inexcusable.” Contrast this point of view with that of Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, who last year actually held up slow play as a positive.
“We’re in the entertainment business,” he said. “We’re on TV. Look at the number of times that we’re finishing on time, if not early. That’s a frustration of mine because we don’t want people turning off CBS or NBC before the competition, before 6pm.”
There are a few points to make about that astonishing statement. First, let me repeat, that slow play is against the regulations; you know those sacred rules that have seen players disqualified for the grievous crime of not signing their scorecards properly.
Rule 5.6a states the penalty for the first slow play breach is one shot, the second time is two shots and the third is DQ. It does not mention fines as a deterrent, but that is the Tour’s answer - and such are the ludicrous sums now on offer that this approach is more ineffective than ever.
Only one punishment will speed them up and that is on the scorecard.
Just like LIV, the Tour’s rules allow 50 seconds for the first to play and 40 seconds for the others, but the regulation is broken so many times in a round by so many players that it seems unenforceable. So the issue has been permitted to fester to the extent where nearly five-hour rounds for threeballs and four hours for twoballs are deemed acceptable. Indeed, Monahan intimated that the TV executives set their schedules by these pathetic average times. All in the name of “entertainment”. Laughable.
In truth, viewers are aghast when seeing Patrick Cantlay take 84 seconds over a four-footer - as he did at Harbour Town last April - and are turned off by JB Holmes taking more than four minutes to play his approach on the last at Torrey Pines a few years ago.
Both Americans are as painfully slow as kidney stones, but they are not the only culprits or even the worst. The Tour happens to have more tortoises than the Galapagos Islands. And inaction has consequences.
Hackers copy pros and inevitably, the curse has spread into the club game, with monthly medals now stretching to unfathomable periods. Do you remember when you could zoom around in three hours and it did not even feel fast? Halcyon days. Pace of play is regularly shown up in surveys as one of the main factors for golfers quitting. In an era when time is ever more precious, the sport continues to shoot itself in the cement boot.
So well done LIV and well done Norman for persuading White to change the habit of a near lifetime by finally hitting the pros where it hurts. Every Tour and each commissioner should follow suit.
LIV’s crusade on slow play is laudable – some on the PGA Tour move slower than kidney stones
It is now 29 years since the Tour hit a slow coach in the only place it hurts: their scorecard