Like almost every golfer, I dislike slow play, even if I do find aggressively fast play slightly more annoying – another unpopular opinion!
I wouldn’t describe myself as the swiftest player, but I’m aware of others around me and I don’t leave my bag on the wrong side of the green, mark my card after the last member of my four-ball has holed out and so on.
While drawn out pre-shot routines and amateurs taking forever to pull the trigger can be irritating, I think the putting green is the place where most time can be shaved off shots.
Off the tee, it’s common to see golfers hit wild slices out of bounds or hook a ball into the trouble – that’s just par for the course, if you’ll excuse the pun.
People lose balls with the driver and hit their irons into penalty areas, which leads to provisionals, drops, rules queries and so on. Nothing we do will ever stop that happening. But we can tangibly improve pace of play on the greens.
My colleague Barry Plummer did some analysis of the pace of play on the PGA Tour last year and identified the green as the place where most players flagrantly breach the circuit’s rules around speed of play.
“Over the course of my research, I recorded a total of 16 players and found that there were 26 occasions where the ‘bad time’ was exceeded on the putting green.
“Four of the 16 players overstepped this mark on at least one occasion when putting, and the worst offender accrued eight individual instances in a nine-hole period.
“Some of the times recorded weren’t even close to being deemed acceptable, either, with two players registering times of more than 85 seconds to prepare for a putt, and 14 out of the 26 recorded infringements coming in at one minute or more.”
In short, there’s a lot that needs fixing in both the professional and amateur games on the putting surfaces. In my view, the three biggest culprits are AimPoint, excessive marking and lines being drawn on balls.
(Image credit: Barry Plummer)
One Per Person
Now, some will argue that AimPoint speeds up play because people know what they’re doing and approach their green reading with purpose. From what I’ve seen on tour and at the golf club, I wouldn’t share the same view. That said, trying to eradicate AimPoint feels like shutting the stable door…
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