5 ways to speed up the pros

Nobody likes being out at 6.15am on the first day of the Open Championship. Likewise, nobody wants to be last out on the second day of the US Open, when the greens have been trodden into oblivion. So, let’s reserve those places for players who continually clock up bad times on the PGA and European Tours. No matter who you are, if you amass three or more bad times over the course of six months, you’ll get a rubbish tee time for your next event.

3 Remove earnings from official prize money

Any player who clocks up two or more bad times in any one tournament has their earnings for that event deducted from their official prize money on the tour. So, they can bank their cheques but it just won’t count towards their position on the Race To Dubai, for example. Let’s see how they like it when their glacial pace costs them a place in the big events. Or worse, their tour card.

4 Suspensions

When a footballer clocks up several yellow cards over a pre-determined amount of time, he is forced to sit out a pre-determined number of matches. It’s the same when he gets red-carded. So, let’s have a little bit of that for the golfers who are repeatedly put on the clock. Let’s call a bad time a yellow card. For three of them  over the course of a season, he is forced to sit out the next event he has already qualified for or entered into – even if it’s a major or a World Golf Championship. 

5 Baseball caps? What baseball caps?

Hitting the top players with fines isn’t going to make a difference. They’re all multi-millionaires, after all. But take away their baseball caps for a tournament and you do several things: you upset their sponsors, who lose out on publicity that they pay handsomely for; you change the playing conditions for the players, who are used to competing with caps on week in, week out; and you also punish them by humiliation (‘No cap? They must be slow’). Simple.

Speeding up play :: your solutions

Do you have ideas of you own to speed up play in the professional ranks? Leave your thoughts in our ‘Comments’ section below.

Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor