Changes the Tours Should Consider

Ever had the road to yourself early in the morning and you pull up to one of those stoplights that still works on a timer rather than having sensors to detect when traffic is around? It’s pretty annoying.

Sometimes professional golf is like that. It doesn’t always keep up with the times in terms of rules. Don’t get me wrong… I love the traditions of golf, but there are some practices on the tours that could be changed to improve the spectator experience.

So at the risk of offending staunch traditionalists, I’m going to make some suggestions that could improve the pace of play, fashion sense, and fan experience of professional golf (even at the risk of bending the immovable obstruction rule). I’m not entirely serious about these solutions, but I think they do point out a few annoying aspects of modern professional golf. Here are some things that really get my goat (and one that just strikes me as a little silly)… Nothing that a local rule or two couldn’t fix.Number Five: Bring On the Shot Clock
I admit I have selfish reasons for this one. I’d like to be able to watch the leaders play the final nine holes of any tournament in under two and half hours. Unfortunately, golf is pretty much the slowest moving regularly televised sport on American television (bass fishing aside).

Slow play on the Tour is just painful. I routinely play in foursomes that easily can get around a course in four hours, sometimes even faster, provided the groups ahead are not too slow. Tour rounds, with the pros playing in twosomes, last for five-and-a-half or six hours… They’re painfully slow, and they shouldn’t be.

Let’s give each player, oh, 45 seconds to play a shot once the player (a) has reached (and found) the ball, (b) is next to play, (c) can hit safely without endangering the group ahead. This rule would apply on the greens as well. Maybe allow a “free” minute once all players have reached the green for the players to repair ball marks and make their reads, but then hold each to 45 seconds to play. No exceptions.

Currently, the rules allow each player 40 seconds to play their shot, but only when the group is out of position. Forget that – enforce the rule non-stop. The local scorer can press a button on their walking electronic scorekeeping machine that will alert the nearest official if a player routinely takes too long.

Number Four: No Silly Caps
Those painter caps that Ryan Moore and Camilo Villegas are sporting are starting to get on my nerves. Briny Baird’s PF Changs banded straw hat is certainly annoying. At least Duffy Waldorf seems to be over the floral cap phase these days.

What a player chooses to wear on his or her head isn’t really a big deal. Wear what you want to, but I think painters caps look a bit goofy. There are good choices in headgear (Greg Norman’s decision to go with a regular cap at this year’s Open Championship… the straw hat would have been in Norway before the week was over) and poor choices (some of the “bonnets” that turn up from time to time on the LPGA). Of course, my fashion sense isn’t always reliable. I also originally thought that Jesper Parnevik’s brim-up cap looked silly, and he turned that into a personal brand. Well, come to think about it, it still seems kind of silly. But there are more pressing issues at hand.

Number Three: Align Yourself
One of the most celebrated aspects of golf is that the pros play the same game as amateurs. Here’s something you rarely see on a typical public course: a caddy lining up a player. OK, occasionally you will see a more experienced golfer lining up a beginner, but you rarely if ever see an accomplished player lining up another accomplished player. Why should the pros? You see it constantly on the LPGA, though most of the men have enough pride not to seek such help (J.B. Holmes notwithstanding).

I think caddies are great. Let them read the green, provide yardage, and keep their pros’ heads together. But if a pro can’t accomplish such a basic task as lining herself up at a target, maybe she should find a new line of work.

Number Two: Learn the Rules
I have no stats to support it, but I’ll bet that the number one cause of slow play on tour is the superfluous use of rules officials… “just to be sure.” Players rely on rulings from officials who must drive up in their carts and say things like, “Yes, you dolt. You may take free drop when your ball comes to rest on a sprinkler head. One club length. No closer to the hole, idiot.”

Rules officials probably don’t talk to the pros that way, but there are times I wish they did. Like when Matthew Goggin began measuring two club lengths back from a water hazard (yellow stakes). That’s not one of the options when the hazard is marked yellow, of course. Luckily, his caddie stopped him before he did anything more. And naturally, Goggin then called the rules official to clarify a rule that most high school golfers know (and all should). What a waste of time!

My first thought is to force the pros make the calls themselves. If they mess up on a ruling, the appropriate penalty is handed out (higher score or a DQ, most likely). They’ll learn the rules soon enough or lose their cards and have to work for a living like the rest of us. There are millions of dollars at stake. I’ll bet that aspiring pros will make a point of becoming rules experts before they even seek their card. Rules officials will be more like officials in other sports, though in golf, instead of calling fouls, they will simply confirm violations that the players call themselves. If there’s a question of a ruling, the player can always proceed by playing two balls through the hole and seeking clarification in the scoring hut. It could add a level of drama when there’s a question of whether a player made a par or a bogey on a hole, for instance.

That’ll be counter-productive to speeding up play, of course. So how about this: keep it the way it is, with kindly rules officials helping the players out. But when a player calls for ruling for a simple rule that should be obvious, slap him or her with a one-stroke “delay of play” penalty. That should keep things moving.

Come on, pros. Act like you’ve played the game before. When it’s an obvious ruling, go ahead and make it, take the drop, and get on with it. Let the official relax a bit in his cart.

Number One: No Free and/or Easy Drops from the Stands
Players should not be able to dump the ball into the stands next to a green and get a free drop. Isn’t that what sand traps on pro tours are for? Sure, the player burns a stroke in playing to the bleachers, but when they can get a free drop right next to the green, it becomes a pretty attractive choice to laying up. Given the choice between a greenside bunker and a grandstand, I’d have a much easier time hitting the stands, as well. A grandstand is an immovable obstruction, naturally, but the free drop from them provides an out that, in my view, professional players shouldn’t need or receive – and one that an average golfer will never get.

Here’s the scenario, a player has a one shot lead coming down the stretch. On 18, he pushes his drive into the rough and trees block his line to the green. Instead of playing out to the fairway like most of us would have to, he purposely hits a flyer into the stands that crowd the left side of the green. Instead of being penalized for a poor play, the player gets a free drop, right beside the green in a primo location. (Naturally, he’ll also need to call for a rules official to come tell him he can drop it in the white circle painted on the ground and marked “DROP ZONE.”)

What’s wrong with that? Besides the fact that a fan could easily be hurt by such a shot, allowing a free drop next to the green gives too much of a free pass for the player. As the commercial says, “These guys are good.” And most will easily get up and down from a clean greenside lie. It also slows down play.

When the immovable object rule came into being, stands on golf courses were rare, if not unheard of. In a perfect world, stands would be banned. It’s not going to happen, of course, because fans want to be close to the action, and that’s good for the game. Where practical though, courses that host top notch tournaments should add mounding or bowls around the greens to allow more fans to see the action without putting stands up right next to the green. At the Memorial Tournament, played at Muirfield Village Golf Club, virtually all of the stands and corporate boxes are out of play and slopes near the greens give fans a great view. When a player hits a shot into the fans on the slopes, he still has to play it from where it lies.

So if we can’t get rid of the stands, at least we can make it a penalty to hit into them. Think of it as a special kind of OB. Go ahead and give the player a drop, but penalize him a stroke under a local “fan protection” rule. Dropping bombs in on spectators is not a very fan-friendly practice. Especially when they are tightly packed in seats where they can’t get out of the way very well.

And if you don’t like that option, how about we at least move the drop zone to somewhere unsavory… like maybe a sidehill lie under a tree with a bunker to carry to the green. That will at least keep most players from willfully dumping the ball into the stands.

Photo Credits: © AP, © 2008 The Sand Trap .com.