How do we solve golf’s slow play crisis? There’s really only one answer…

I don’t wish this to sound like a brag, but I was playing at a very nice golf course recently.  

Only I didn’t really enjoy it.  

The course, as ever, was spectacular and one of the finest on these fair isles, and my playing partner is almost always good company.  

But the group in front made it a rather miserable experience.  

My pairing had the final tee time of the day as the sun closed in on the horizon, and there were several fourballs in front of us, so a four-and-a-half-hour round was to be expected, with plenty of time to make our 8pm Indian restaurant reservation. 

It was relatively good going until we got to the tricky par-3 eighth. The group ahead were zero-for-four in GIR and struggling to find the bottom of the cup. The halfway house, nestled just behind the ninth tee, had never seemed so far away. 

We flicked our wedges onto the green, rolled in our pars and made our way to the next hole – where not only had the group in front stopped to get some refreshments, but it became quite apparent they were so far off the pace that the four ahead of them had disappeared into the distance.  

In hindsight, we should have just asked. Why do we never ask? Have you ever requested to play through? It’s such an awkward moment and the invite should absolutely be from the holder-uppers. 

But it was like we weren’t even there.  

Instead, we resorted to passive aggressive huffing and puffing and resigned ourselves to getting acquainted with a bench for several minutes.  

At the lengthy par-5 15th, what felt like an eternity later, it swung drastically from being poor etiquette to just ludicrous behaviour. 

One half of the group was on the green putting out, while the other two were yet to play their second shots. We assumed, with daylight rapidly dimming, they had split into two twos to speed things up. But no, the first pair holed out then inexplicably waited several minutes for their playing partners to catch up.  

If we didn’t laugh, we would have cried.  

We finished on 18 with only the light of the clubhouse guiding us home and were more than an hour late for our poppadoms.  

I’m sure you’ll all be reading that and now reminiscing about a time someone made you so angry with their inability to get round a golf course in a reasonable time that you’re not even concentrating on reading this paragraph. 

When you’re back in the room, I’ll tell you how much I’ve been enjoying Charley Hull’s one-woman crusade against slow play.  

She eased us in at the Women’s Open a few years back. “I wish they had played a lot faster because I hate slow play,” she said at the time. “I get so bored. 

“To grow the game, people don’t want to be sat there for hours and hours watching slow golf. I get told a lot it’s crazy how slow we play.  

“When I’m at home with my friends we go around in three hours. On tour, last week, I played five hours and 40 minutes. It can be a long day. 

“At the end of the day, you have a yardage and it’s sometimes obvious what club it is. Just hit it. People fart around too much.” 

Now, though, she’s had enough, and she wants proper action.  

At last week’s LPGA event, it took the best part of six hours for her and eventual champion Nelly Korda to complete their round. So what’s Hull’s answer?  

“I’m quite ruthless,” she said. “If you get three bad timings, every time it’s a two-shot penalty. 

“If you have three of them you lose your Tour card instantly.” 

Brutal. But it would work.  

Hull believes her plan “would kill slow play”, but, she added: “They would never do that.” 

The PGA Tour is being so unserious about it all that even the mild-mannered Matt Fitzpatrick is calling it “pathetic”, while over on the LPGA, Carlota Ciganda – known among her peers as the “Human Weather Delay” – was handed a $1,000 fine for each of her bad times at last week’s event. As noted by James Corrigan in his Telegraph column on the same subject, had the Spaniard been hit with penalty shots instead, she wouldn’t have qualified for this week’s bank-busting season-ending Tour Championship, where she will earn a minimum of $55,000 just for teeing off. 

Players on both the men’s and women’s tours know they can do it because the only deterrent – if you can call it that – is the tiniest dent in their bank balance.   

What’s the point? We all just have to sit and shrug while those who have the power to make change do precisely nothing to fix it. (Or, in the case of the PGA Tour, the exact opposite.)  

The result is that, for years now, it’s been seeping in at club level.  

Last week I played a three-ball at a very busy Woodhall Spa – rated one of the hardest courses in the country – and you know there’s a wider problem when you’re walking off 18 and saying things like, “Oh, that only took us three and a half hours!” 

It shouldn’t be a surprise. It should be the norm.

Remember, we’re trying to get more people playing this sport. And there’s only so-much growing the game our heroes over at LIV Golf can do.  

So what can be done? Maybe we need to take a leaf out of Hull’s ruthless playbook. 

I’ll start.

Anyone taking longer than four hours to play 18 holes of golf being put in stocks outside the clubhouse for other players to jeer them.

Now you go.

• John Daly’s Claret Jug sells at auction… for more than he won at The Open!

• European stars weigh in on Ryder Cup pay controversy

High steaks

First Brian Harman, now Sam Burns.  

What is it with American golfers and their enjoyment of grinning maniacally while holding an animal they’ve recently murdered for sport? 

Then, of course, social media is filled with Reply Guys responding to dissenters with things like, “Well, you eat meat!” 

You’re right. I eat meat almost every day. And, do you know what, I’ve managed to go 42 years without once parading publicly with a blood-soaked carcass.  

That’s on me, guys. Sorry about that. 

Fee-fi-fo-fibs

I’ve been enjoying the back-and-forth about whether or not players should get paid to play in the Ryder Cup, but the ticket price row is still rumbling on in the background after people started posting screengrabs on social media of just how much they were being asked to fork out.  

I’ve been graced with the exclusive honor of being allowed to buy $2,000 worth of Ryder Cup tickets!! Do I do it?? pic.twitter.com/gZNU4Hwewc

— Stephanie Wei (@StephanieWei) November 7, 2024

I’m no Carol Vorderman, but I make that around $250 in fees on top of what is already almost $900 a ticket. 

But, wait, remember when PGA of America defended the extortionate prices by saying the number you see is the number you’ll pay at checkout? 

Still, someone’s got to pay Patrick Cantlay what he wants. And it ain’t gonna be them. 

Sun Day Dread 

Another week, another release in the Tiger Woods’ Sun Day Red line. This time it’s a $450 golf bag.  

Out of interest, has anyone got any SDR gear? Or know anyone that has? I’m starting to think it’s a front for something.

Tiger, it would be much cheaper to just open a barber shop on any high street in any British town…

And finally…

I finish, as always, with recommendations of my talented colleagues’ work.

I can’t start anywhere else other than this excellent scoop from Ben Parsons about Sergio Garcia.

(It will be interesting to see what the consensus is among the European Ryder Cup players – but a worrying amount of people who should know better are saying he should be in simply for his record. On that basis, why not give Sir Nick a run-out at Bethpage? Or Monty? Or Ollie? One thing’s for sure, it reopens the future captaincy debate…)

While we’re on it, Michael McEwan was at his finger-blistering best when punching into his keyboard about the Ryder Cup pay row.

And John Turnbull’s insight into the latest threat to golf courses in the UK is as fascinating as it is concerning.

If you’re out this week, wrap up warm and play well!

Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor