This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Golf, especially, at the professional level, is played too slowly.

It’s often tedious to watch as players take too much time over shots, despite the huge money that is at stake.

And, don’t forget, the official golf rules call for taking 40 seconds to play shots, unless there is a “significant distraction.”  The 40-second rule is rarely enforced.

So it was that, a few days ago in this blog, I posted my solution:  Use a shot-clock positioned in a golf cart behind every group on the course and impose the 40-second rule.  Give warnings and then penalties for times over that limit.

This approach, as I have written previously, was tried a few ago in Europe in what called the “Shot Clock Masters.”

Looked good to me.

But, as I was reading my latest on-line edition of Global Golf Post, another proposal came to my attention.

It came from a letter writer in Florida.  This is a paraphrase:

• Offer an incentive for the entire field in a tournament to increase the pace-of-play. 

• Don’t just penalize one player.

• Agree on an overall pace-of-play standard and, then, if the field exceeds that standard, give 1 per cent of the purse back to the tournament sponsor.  Or, perhaps even a higher percentage.

• And, if pace reaches the standard in the second round, restore the purse.  Etc.

Just think about this for a minute.  Makes sense because a money – slow play associated with it — drives some, though perhaps not all, of tournament play.

The key is to provide an incentive for the entire field to play faster.

Mimicking professional baseball, professional golf should do something – anything – to move along faster.  Viewership depends on it.