How to Fix Glacial Slow Play

Slow Play. It Sucks. And it feels like it isn’t getting better. Here, There or Anywhere.

Whether a five-plus round at your local track or professionals playing for Monopoly-esque levels of cash on any tour, it is as painful as the chafe mark from wearing your jeans commando for a day.

At least we mortals can lounge in a cart, swill liquid courage, and channel our inner Patrick Swayze from Roadhouse exclaiming what we’d like to do to the human toll booths in front of us.

For as long as there has been golf, there has been much discussion of this problem.

Lists have been made to shame those included into quickening the pace of play.

This isn’t just a recent phenomenon - classic slow player Glen Day; nicknamed “All” as in Glen “All Day” for his sloth-like pace of play. Other pokey players have been told they play so slow that they could be bronzed (like an old pair of baby shoes).

Paul Azinger, when speaking of notorious slow play “guru” Bernhard Langer, that “the powers that be should be invoking the same-day rule” when he tees it up. Even Lee Trevino once exclaimed that “Bernhard was clean-shaven when this round started”.

Rory Sabattini (the other Rory) once famously putted out ahead of Ben Crane and waited for him on the next tee he was so exasperated with Crane’s glacial pace of play.

What to do about slow play you ask? There are a few ideas, some clever, some not terribly legal, but all would certainly suffice to get things moving:

• Adhering to slow play rules and actually handing out penalty strokes
• You can only talk to your caddy while walking to your ball
• For every hole a group falls behind, they have the choice—lose a club or take a shot of whiskey
• Instead of a scorekeeper walking with you, there’s a shot clock...staring you in the face
• If your nickname is the Human Rain Delay, you are the problem
• If you’re calculating the heat index, you’re forced to get your meteorology degree
• What ideas do you have? Let us know at news@thestartershack.com

Worst case, we hear that Greg Norman’s game of Roshambo is a great motivator (as it is clear the classic shame bell from Game of Thrones doesn’t work).