"I wait on every single shot, every single day on the PGA Tour," he said. "I've gotten really used to doing that."

[Chas]

Thanks for the insights Fourputt, very interesting and not always intuitively obvious. Something that IS fairly obvious, but I'll mention it anyway :-) , is that in any group of four with hcp's in the 10-20 range, on any given hole it's very likely that at least one player is having a rough time. Possible lost ball so need to search, hit OOB, in the pond, behind a tree, fried egg in bunker etc etc. Often one bad shot is followed by another. And it is that person (or two) who dictates the pace on that hole in a sense. I try not to be that person but sometimes I am. There isn't much we can do about that except hope people try hard to keep up the pace even when they're playing badly and are in a poor frame of mind. And heaven forbid you're having a rotten 9 or even 18 hole stretch, just suck it up and keep moving.

[ThominOH]

Honestly.. In my opinion slow play on public courses happen for 1 main reasons..

1) Players follow examples from peers and especially from TV that it is OK to take 3 minutes to line up a putt.. Golf needs to avoid BORING play and add in a shot clock... Pool does this.. Football does it.. Almost every mainstream sport has instituted some rule to avoid CLOCK abuse.. except golf..  Problem is does that PGA have the balls to dictate speed of play?  I think not.. :(   Part of golf is being able to swing your shot in a reasonable amount of time, which isn't happening.. If anything it's only getting worse..

2) Public courses need to clean up their courses.. What I mean here is that I see way to many public courses that are so in love with aesthetics, they ignore or forgot how the course actually plays.. I have a local course that thinks they are an arboretum.. An over abundance of trees, and so many have branches so low to the ground, they act more like a hazard.. Too many golfers spending wasted time searching for balls lost in pine trees, hedges or similar.. I know courses like using nature as a barrier to protect neighboring fairways.. BUT.. There is no need to protect my ankles..

Those are my 2 observations and pet peeves in golf that can help speed up play..

[dragonflyin]

I mostly play in China and the average round is >5 hours.  As all courses require caddies, and most require carts in addition.........  ridiculous.

[Willie Malay]

Speaking of slow play. Just last week we played through a group...........IN A SCRAMBLE!!! It was horrendous watching them.