Perspective from the 19^th Hole 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.

This blog headline, which I borrowed from my on-line edition of First Call, could be overstated. 

Time bomb?  Maybe not.

But slow play is a major issue for pro golf, one that trickles down to all of us who love the game and play as amateurs.

And, indicating that slow play is a hot-button issue for me, I choose to write about it again today.

First Call Writer Gary Van Sickle started the debate by writing about slow play a week or so ago.  Then, his piece prompted letters to the editor, which I reprint below.

LETTER #1:  “Enough already.

“You have 40 seconds to play.  They need to start tracking each player on every hole.  One person following the group, timestamp when the first player tees off.  Timestamp the next player’s shot.  Then you timestamp when every player hits their shot.

“It should become apparent who the slow players are and how long they take to play. 

“When they go to sign their scorecard show them the data and, if necessary, hit them with a one-stroke penalty for playing slow that day. 

“PGA Tour, LPGA, Korn Ferry, colleges … it’s nuts how long they take.  All that impacts private clubs and public courses around the country.  Put in a comment section for searching for a lost ball, penalty drop, weather delay, etc. in case there are delays that need to be accounted for.

“Call Maverick McNealy, he could figure it out.”  [McNealy is a current pro player who graduated from Stanford, so he no doubt is a smart guy, not to mention an up and coming playes who got his first win this year.]

LETTER #2:  “Perhaps if they enforced the rules already on the books, they could help improve the pace-of-play.

“They allow guys like Keegan Bradley to mark, re-mark, do a form of the cha cha dance before putting.  Speaking of marking, I’ve seen pros mark from inches away to realign the ball, etc.  Madness.  Just tap it in.

“The pros are fairly insecure and have mental, as well as swing, coaches. Guys like Max Homa go through a grueling process before each shot.

“Why they need to start that after their playing partner has hit rather than while he’s hitting is a mystery.  

“On the LPGA, other than Nelly Korda, the pace is snail-like.  The pros are far too reliant on their caddies and engage in lengthy discussions
before pulling a club.  They all want to copy Phil Mickelson and Bones [Jim Mackay] who started this trend.  Their lack of confidence and mental toughness is shocking for world-class athletes.

“On the PGA Tour, now with smaller fields of multi-millionaires, any monetary fines are meaningless.  Stroke penalties perhaps.  Even that probably won’t help.  Coming in 15th or 25th still garners a six-figure check now that Mickelson allegedly forced bigger purses and the players decided to shrink the fields.

“The LPGA isn’t as greedy and has bigger fields, and a monetary fine could be a significant incentive to speed things up.  Hard to say.

“I doubt much will change.  There’s no real appetite among the ones with any real power to enact change.  They could have done it already if
they really wanted to.”

LETTER #3:  “I believe that during a tournament there should first be a warning and the player or players put on the clock.  If the pace doesn’t improve, a one-stroke penalty should be imposed.  If the pace still doesn’t improve, then a two-stroke penalty and a monetary fine.

“The pace of play infractions should then be placed on the player’s permanent record so that in the future, if the player is cited for slow play again in another tournament, the penalty is doubled and the player is disqualified.  There is simply no reason why a round can’t be completed in four hours, give or take a few minutes.”

Good letters.  All three.

The solution, as I have advocated previously, is simple.  Place a shot clock on golf carts that follow each group on every golf hole.  Start the clock at the appropriate time as a player has drawn a club.  One missed time generates a warning.  A second miss generates a one-stroke penalty.

And so on until disqualification.

This was done, by the way, a few years ago in Europe, in a tournament called The Shot Clock Masters.  It worked well.

Before long, pros – even though they make thousands of dollars each week – would get the message.

As one letter writer said, those in golf already could have made a change if they wanted to do so.  They could simply enforce existing pace-of-play rules.

Who knows why they don’t as they watch TV ratings go down.

As a footnote, where I play as an amateur in the winter at The Palms Golf Course in La Quinta, California, the solution already is in place, albeit for all of us as amateurs.  We are given three hours and 40 minutes to play 18 holes.

If we miss the mark, we are given a warning and then, if we miss again, we get fined.

So I say, just play golf.  Don’t dawdle.