Bryson Takes 2:15 to Miss an Eight Foot Putt

[butchammon]

13 minutes ago, colin007 said:

So in all seriousness, what happens if you leave the guy on the green and go to the next hole? What if it's Thursday or Friday and BOTH of the other guys leave him on the green? Then he's the one who isn't keeping up, that'd be hilarious.

 

Didn't Rory Sabbatini do that once to another slow player?  Nothing became of it, if I remember...  Rory Sabbatini (who is well known as a "hot headed golfer") walked off the green, and was getting set to tee off on the next hole!

[krupa]

Golfers hide behind the "I'm playing for a lot of money" defense and roles officials simply don't want to defend themselves when they make the call to penalize a player. Stalemate, until people stop watching golf at all.

Rules officials need to man up, make the call, and then stand by it.  "Social media backlash" ends as fast as it starts, they'll survive it.

2 minutes for a putt on Friday should have been no brainier.

[ChrisP]

Not sure who is the bigger d-bag after this week, BDC or Grillo.

[Vinsk]

34 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

I like the idea of knowing the physics.  We have that right here in this website - the true understanding of what goes into the game and how to use it. 

Except he doesn’t. Real physicists explained how his ‘calculations’ he applied to golf were rubbish. It’s just OCD. The same way one thinks he has to lock a door 13 times before leaving, Douche-Shambeau thinks his calculations are necessary.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Vinsk

[Foot Wedge]

16 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

Real physicists explained how his ‘calculations’ he applied to golf were rubbish.

Link please, I would LOVE to read this.  Also a real physicist would understand the concept of a constraint on an experiment or calculation...or in Bryson's case, the MF 40 second time limit.

Also, can we point out how badly he missed that putt?  I mean, it's not like he JUST missed it, it wasn't even remotely close.  That was some "I just gave it a whack because I still had an 8-footer for double and the hole was already ruined" kind of nonsense.  Hell, it might have been a better putt if he had just done that...

Edited August 12, 2019 by Foot Wedge
Had to bring some more heat

[DaveP043]

32 minutes ago, krupa said:

2 minutes for a putt on Friday should have been no brainier.

Over 2 minutes is certainly excessive, but do we really know if it SHOULD have been a penalty?  I wasn't watching, so I don't know the answers, but was his group on the clock?  If they were, was BDC given a warning after exceeding the allotted time once?  If so, and he exceeded the time limit a second time, he should have been assessed a penalty stroke.  But if his group was close enough to the group in front, he can take all the time he wants without being penalized.  If this was his first time exceeding the time limit after being notified about being on the clock, he cannot be penalized.  It takes a lot of slow play to actually merit a penalty under the current PGA Tour policy.

I do have a problem with Slugger White saying he's opposed to giving players a stroke penalty.  Once the policy is in place, his job, and the job of all of the PGA Tour rules officials, is to enforce the rules.  All of the rules.  By selectively enforcing rules, the officials ARE changing the competitive balance.  If the guy who SHOULD have been penalized for slow play is the last one to remain eligible, he may be taking the place of a guy who plays within the rules.  The decision to NOT enforce the rule has then cost the faster player his own livelihood.  

[saevel25]

I wouldn’t mind them having a general fine for slow play. Make it something like 10-20 grand each violation. 

[David in FL]

14 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

I wouldn’t mind them having a general fine for slow play. Make it something like 10-20 grand each violation. 

It wouldn’t have any appreciable impact if a stroke difference is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I really think that the consequence has to be such that slow play has a perceived higher likelihood of costing them more, than the perceived likelihood of earning more. 

[PeaceFrogg]

7 minutes ago, David in FL said:

I really think that the consequence has to be such that slow play has a perceived higher likelihood of costing them more, than the perceived likelihood of earning more. 

Well stated. Agree 100%.

[iacas]

14 minutes ago, David in FL said:

It wouldn’t have any appreciable impact if a stroke difference is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One stroke is only worth that much near the very top of the leaderboard.

[rehmwa]

1 hour ago, Vinsk said:

Except he doesn’t. Real physicists explained how his ‘calculations’ he applied to golf were rubbish. It’s just OCD. The same way one thinks he has to lock a door 13 times before leaving, Douche-Shambeau thinks his calculations are necessary.

I'm coming around to this point of view.

Good physics - having a rough idea of how the wind and elevation and temp/humidity will impact your shot. Then accommodating that input with your swing (which has a pretty good sized variation vs what you are trying to compensate for).  That actually shouldn't take very long at all.  At the worst, it's reviewing some very quick lookup tables.  At the best, it's having done that enough that you should have a feel that's good enough to eventually just have those tables as backup.  As for putts......sigh, at some point, the little imperfections, etc indicate pulling the trigger is likely - you can only get so close..

This is way over that line (It's not having so many significant digits that he's operating under the background variation inherent in the swing and even what we 'think' is perfect conditions.) - I agree it's likely more OCD and an illusion of some level of control.  If he can't overcome that, he'll have to add in the time constraint to force it into his comfort zone.  Else, he'll just have to be uncomfy.

slow play rules need to be defined, and enforced evenly.  Dave's post was excellent on that.

1 hour ago, DaveP043 said:

Over 2 minutes is certainly excessive, but do we really know if it SHOULD have been a penalty?  I wasn't watching, so I don't know the answers, but was his group on the clock?  If they were, was BDC given a warning after exceeding the allotted time once?  If so, and he exceeded the time limit a second time, he should have been assessed a penalty stroke.  But if his group was close enough to the group in front, he can take all the time he wants without being penalized.  If this was his first time exceeding the time limit after being notified about being on the clock, he cannot be penalized.  It takes a lot of slow play to actually merit a penalty under the current PGA Tour policy.

I do have a problem with Slugger White saying he's opposed to giving players a stroke penalty.  Once the policy is in place, his job, and the job of all of the PGA Tour rules officials, is to enforce the rules.  All of the rules.  By selectively enforcing rules, the officials ARE changing the competitive balance.  If the guy who SHOULD have been penalized for slow play is the last one to remain eligible, he may be taking the place of a guy who plays within the rules.  The decision to NOT enforce the rule has then cost the faster player his own livelihood.  

I really like this reset - it's easy to find something annoying and bloviate on it.  But in the end, the rules are the driving force - and consistently applying them is the key.  Keep up with the group in front of you, and you are doing your job.  What happens then might be annoying, but it's not a pace of play issue.  (I still think a 2 minute putt is ridiculous)

Edited August 12, 2019 by rehmwa

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

slow play rules need to be defined, and enforced evenly.  Dave's post was excellent on that.

I disagree. Strongly. The current rules require you to be out of position. So all that happens is everyone plays slowly. Then you’re given too much leeway when you are out of position.

Bryson’s group wasn’t out of position. But what he did was unacceptable. 

 

[DaveP043]

17 minutes ago, iacas said:

I disagree. Strongly. The current rules require you to be out of position. So all that happens is everyone plays slowly. Then you’re given too much leeway when you are out of position.

Bryson’s group wasn’t out of position. But what he did was unacceptable. 

I agree with this, and would support strengthening the Tour's slow-play policy.  As @iacas says, it is way to easy to avoid being penalized for slow play.  It will be interesting to see if the policy does get changed as  aresult of the current review by the PGA Tour:

PGA Tour to review pace of play, consider penalty

---

Following days of controversy and a few high-profile examples of slow play involving golfer Bryson DeChambeau, the PGA Tour said Sunday it will review its policy and consider ways to penalize players even if their group...

Quote

 The Tour said it would look at ways, using shot link technology, to attack the issue and would consider penalizing players whose group is otherwise in position but still taking an excessive amount of time.

 

[David in FL]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

One stroke is only worth that much near the very top of the leaderboard.

I know.  But regardless, the penalty has to be perceived as worse than the potential likely benefit.  That’s why a simple fine won’t work.  It needs to be strokes...

Edited August 12, 2019 by David in FL

[ChetlovesMer]

2 hours ago, Vinsk said:

Except he doesn’t. Real physicists explained how his ‘calculations’ he applied to golf were rubbish. It’s just OCD. The same way one thinks he has to lock a door 13 times before leaving, Douche-Shambeau thinks his calculations are necessary.

I hear a lot of people calling him names and I read a lot of people calling him D-bag and the like. It kind of bothers me. I have a really good friend who suffers from OCD and granted it can be annoying, by the same token my friend isn't trying to be annoying. 

I agree he should have been penalized. But I remember seeing an interview with him a couple years ago when he was explaining that he truly does suffer from OCD. In his normal life it can be somewhat debilitating, on the golf course it can be brutal. But he also mentioned that the only way he feels he can play golf is to "convince" himself that he has thought of every possible factor. Whether those factors are accurate or even relevant is very VERY questionable. However, some of the things he's come up with are actually kind of interesting. 

In my humble opinion this lies squarely at the feet of the PGA. Either they have a pace of play rule or they don't. If you let him take 2 and a half minutes to hit a putt with no ramifications you are basically saying it's okay. 

Much like my friend, whom we never let choose where to eat lunch. If we did we'd all starve and then shame on us. One of us non-OCD people picks the restaurant and we go. The PGA should start penalizing slow players. They will either work through that or they won't. You can not expect behavior A, while rewarding behavior B. 

[rehmwa]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

I disagree. Strongly. The current rules require you to be out of position. So all that happens is everyone plays slowly. Then you’re given too much leeway when you are out of position.

Bryson’s group wasn’t out of position. But what he did was unacceptable. 

 

I agree with that part in red.  That needs to be addressed.

[LightsOut]

This is almost as bad as those guys who wait for the green to clear while they're still 250 yards out, then they top their three wood (which they couldn't hit 250 if it had rocket boosters).

It's been my experience that the longer you agonize over a shot (myself included), the more likely a poor outcome will result.  This guy now has empirical evidence of that.  As a physicist, you'd think he'd factor it in.

[saturday]

I took a couple years to think about this topic. This is nothing new, Bryson has always been a slow player even before turning pro. Like Koepka said, he gets the exposure and the brunt of the criticism because he's on TV more than the other slow players. While I don't particularly like Bryson I think there's a bunch of guys on tour that are painfully slow... the worst for me is Patrick Cantlay. Just painful watching him... at least now the tour is finally listening and doing something about it... or pretending to at least lol.

Oh and hello world..

(Only some will get that)