Slow play has been the bane of golf long before Kevin Na became the poster boy for the problem and probably since the first Scotsman hit a pebble with a stick. Turns out, as the PGA Tour embarks on a couple of minor pace-of-play initiatives, that other major sports are experimenting with ways to shorten games as well.
PGA Tour starts season with tweaks to speed up pace of play
The PGA Tour hopes a couple of minor changes will improve the flow of the game.
Andrew Redington
David Feherty on GC telecast: "Is play slow today, or am I on the verge of a coma?" Could be talking about more than today on the PGA Tour.
— Randall Mell (@RandallMellGC) May 23, 2014 With any given Red Sox-Yankees game crawling along at about the same tortoise-like clip as a final round of the U.S. Open, baseball officials are as concerned about losing young fans as those involved with the business of golf are with attracting the same demographic. A recent Arizona Fall League game offered hope that major league baseball was on to something when it implemented a game clock to move things along.
Fox Sports noted that, while each of Tuesday night’s two playoff games took an average of more than three hours to play, the Surprise Saguaros and Salt River Rafters had their fans in the parking lot after two hours and 14 minutes. In addition to a 20-second pitch clock, breaks between half innings were down to two minutes and five seconds, and each team could convene meetings on the mound no more than three times.
It's taken just short of 2 1/2 hours to play 5 innings. Love you, but you are too slow baseball, pick it up before I fall asleep. #NLCS
— John Marecek (@JohnMarecek) October 16, 2014 The NBA will also fiddle around with the length of its games when the Boston Celtics and New Jersey Nets play a 44-minute exhibition game on Sunday. While four 11-minute quarters instead of the usual 12-minute periods will have no impact on the skull-imploding over-coaching timeouts that really bog things down in the final seconds, the NBA is trying to slice precious seconds off the 2 1/2 hours it takes to play an average game.
Baseball isn't only sports with slow play issues. @RichSandomir on how late minute of NBA game can be eternity. http://t.co/sOHIcZY5RM
— Ed Sherman (@Sherman_Report) May 12, 2014 As for major league golf, in the wake of the PGA of America’s 2013 “While We’re Young” campaign, the tour began taking baby steps to improve the flow of matches at last week’s season-opening Frys.com Open.
. @bubbawatson on slow play in first round. "It's the PGA Tour. It's always slow. It's the one rule we break every day."
— Sam Weinman (@samweinman) August 7, 2014 Now, instead of having 60 seconds to finish a shot, the first player to hit has 50 seconds. Each of the other players must still take a shot within 40 seconds.
The other modest modification is even more esoteric. On a par-5 hole, each competitor must hit a shot before the group in front has vacated the green rather than the prior mandate that required the action “before the hole is open and free of play,” according to Golf Digest’s Dave Shedloski.
A ShotLink-based system that the tour hopes to test before the end of the year and deploy early in 2015, Shedloski said, would help rules officials track each competitor’s pace, though players would not be penalized based on any of the data collected.
The two changes in play now are likely imperceptible to the naked eye, but as 2009 British Open champion and Player Advisory Council member Stewart Cink told Shedloski, “it’s a start.”
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