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.

Another blog about slow play on a golf course.

Yes, this is a hot-button for me.

For this blog headline, I borrowedfrom the Wall Street Journal which ran an excellent story about what one golf course is doing to curb slow play.

Here is the subhead on the Journal’s story:

“Erin Hills had spent years trying to get recreational golfers to speed up their pace of play.  The solution boiled down to a simple question:  How far can you hit a 7-iron?”

Plus, know that Erin Hills is a very reputable course because, for one reason, it hosted the LPGA Open last week.

The Journal’s writer Andrew Beaton put it this way in his story:

“As the head golf pro at Erin Hills, Jim Lombardo has spent years dreaming up new ways to speed up the pace of play at the world-class course.

“His staff even uses GPS devices to monitor the exact location of each group on the course to identify any stragglers who might slow things down.

“But lately, Lombardo and his team have discovered a new way to get a bunch of everyday hackers through 18 holes in a hurry — and it has nothing to do with a fancy piece of technology.  Instead, it boils down to one simple question.

“How far do you hit your 7-iron?” 

So, how does the “7-iron approach” work?

From the Journal:

“On the walls of the starter’s shack and inside the caddie barn there’s a chart on display that advises players which sets of tees to use based on how far they typically hit that one club.  Since Lombardo first put up the chart in 2023, Erin Hills has seen a 26 per cent uptick in people using the shorter, white tees.  And the overall speed of play has picked up.”

Slow play is a scourge of the golf game at all levels.

The PGA Tour has taken steps – some of them halting, in my judgment —  to limit the amount of time top pros spend standing over their golf balls before playing a shot.  But the problem is more acute for regular folks who carve time out of their busy schedules to sneak in a round, only to find the local course is so backed up that they’re waiting at every tee box.

The answer, at Erin Hills and elsewhere is not just to make golfers play faster.  It is to make them play shorter.

“The idea for the 7-iron solution came from a joint paper published in 2020 by the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.  The headline item from the ‘Distance Insights Report’ was that the growing power of pro golfers was threatening to undermine the game. 

“But what caught the attention of the USGA’s director of research, was the less-publicized conclusion that recreational players take too long because they play from tees that are too far away.

Many courses, including Erin Hills, had tried to advise golfers on which tees to play from based on how far they hit their driver, but that didn’t work because many people embellish that statistic. 

The driver is the most exaggerated club in the bag.  Players tell you how long they hit their best drives — not their average drives. 

That’s less true when it comes to a 7-iron.  

Another issue was that old advice recommended the same playing distance regardless of the golf course that was being measured.  In reality, 6,000 yard tees at one course might be nothing like the 6,000 yards somewhere else. 

More from the Journal:

“By contrast, the ‘7-ron solution’ is custom fit for each course.  It looks at every hole from every tee in order to determine the optimal distance for every player, a calculation that’s helped by a survey the USGA conducted of 65,000 golfers to better understand their games. 

“The idea isn’t to make everyone play such short distances that they feel like they’re at a pitch-and-putt.  Rather, it’s to turn a course into a fair challenge that forces players to use a diverse set of clubs without being unnecessarily difficult. 

“Once Lombardo heard about the method, Erin Hills became one of the pilot courses, and it quickly noticed a change in behavior.  In 2022, 24.2 per cent of players teed off from the whites, a shorter set of tees at Erin Hills.  Last year, that was up to 30.6 per cent.

“The upshot:  Fewer golfers had to be chased down for gumming up the course.  It whittles down the number of groups that might be a challenge for pace of play.”

So, my advice on this issue for courses like those I play:  Try the “7-iron solution.”

Or, just expect recreational golfers to follow the advice from none other than all-time great Jack Nicklaus.  “Play it forward.”