Charley Hull entered the final round at The ANNIKA with the 54-hole lead, holding a one-shot advantage over World No. 1 Nelly Korda and Weiwei Zhang.
Charley Hull is fed up with slow play on the LPGA, so she offered a ‘ruthless’ solution
Englishwoman Charley Hull is sick and tired of finishing rounds after the sun goes down, so she has a solution on how to fix it.
Jack Milko has been playing golf since he was five years old. He has yet to record a hole-in-one, but he did secure an M.A. in Sports Journalism from St. Bonaventure University.
She, therefore, played in the final group with Korda and Zhang as this trio began their final rounds at 11:33 a.m. local time. But Korda did not putt out for her seventh win of the season until a little after 4:30 p.m. ET, meaning this final trio needed five hours to finish. That’s simply unacceptable. On numerous tee boxes, Korda, Hull, and Zhang had to wait as long as 15 minutes, a frustrating reality, especially with the tournament on the line.
So, after her T-2 finish, Hull not only expressed her frustration over the LPGA’s slow play issue but offered a ‘ruthless’ solution.
“It was crazy,” Hull said.
“I’m quite ruthless, but I said, ‘Listen, if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a tee shot penalty; if you have three of them, you lose your Tour card instantly.’ I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up, and they won’t want to lose their Tour card. That would kill the slow play, but they would never do that.”
Hull’s proposal would undoubtedly scare dozens of LPGA players. But she is fed up.
“It’s ridiculous, and I feel sorry for the fans for how slow it is out there,” Hull added.
“We were out there for five hours and 40 minutes [on Saturday]. We play in a Four-Ball at home on a hard golf course, and we’re around in three and a half or four hours. It is pretty crazy.”
Slow play is not exclusive to the LPGA, either. The PGA Tour has struggled with this issue for years and is taking steps to address it. But those measures involve diminishing field sizes and decreasing the number of tee times instead of enforcing slow play policies. That has not been well received by many players, notably three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, 2009 U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover, and numerous journeymen pros, such as Justin Lower.
Who knows if that will work. But if it does not, maybe the PGA Tour should adopt Hull’s idea. The LPGA should, too, or at least assess penalty strokes for slow play. Five-hour rounds for a final group on Sunday is unacceptable and a quick way to lose interest and engagement from fans.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
