At the same time that Guan was penalized a stroke for using 50 seconds on his second shot on 17, Tiger was eyeballing a putt for a minute and 32 seconds {but Tiger's group was not out of position}.
Slow play is one reason that I rarely play golf on the weekends.
During the week my foursome can zip around 18 in 3 hours and change, but on the week end that turns into 5 plus hours and our scores go way up because you can't concentrate that long between shots.
During the week my foursome can zip around 18 in 3 hours and change, but on the week end that turns into 5 plus hours and our scores go way up because you can't concentrate that long between shots.
I absolutely hate slow play. I used to play golf quite frequently; sometimes 2 to 3 times a week for a time until lower back and some other health issues put a stop to my enjoyment of the game. Slow play is awful and yes it ruins concentration and the rhythm of the game. I also preferred walking the course and did whenever possible, preferred to play courses that were walking friendly. I found I played much better; my concentration was much better when walking and carrying my clubs and play was quicker, excepting to having to wait for slow groups in front, plus its great exercise.
And I found that courses that mandated carts and especially ones that were cart path only were incredibly slow. There is nothing worse that standing on the tee watching the group in front of you park their carts along the path, each player taking out a single club and walking to their ball that might be on the other side of the fairway, if they could even find it, watching them look endlessly for a lost ball, then watching one of the players decide he or she picked the wrong club, walk back to the cart to get another club (one should always take several clubs with them, but many don’t), walk back to their ball, then stand and assess their shot for way too long, watching as the first one to take their shot walks back to the cart and waits for everyone else to finish and walk back to the cart before driving the cart forward, rinse and repeat. Ug!
True story. I used to play golf with my husband and usually with other men, usually being the only woman in the foursome. One day we were playing a municipal course that had a very short but difficult par 3 that caused backups. We were waiting behind the tee, waiting for not one but two groups in front of us (all men BTW) on this hole. Another group came up behind us and one of the men, an older man in the group started making very loud grumblings about the slow play and said something to the effect of “These damned women golfers are the reason play is so slow”. And he wasn’t saying it in a way that would make me think he was joking or ribbing me, he was serious.
When our group finally took our shots, I landed my tee shot on the green about 2’ from the pin and after my male playing companions missed the green, landing in a bunker or in the rough and all took bogies+, I putted in for a birdie (I wasn’t all that good of a golfer, decent but not with a single digit handicap FWIW but think I was p!ssed off and really wanted to have a good hole). I shouted back to the grumpy old guy and said, “Was that quick enough for ya sweetie?” “If only there had been three more women like me in my group, you’d have been taking your tee shots 15 minutes ago”.
As my foursome were waiting on the next tee, I could see the par 3 and watched the grumpy old man top his tee shot which dribbled about five feet, then his second which flew over the green into the bunker behind the green. Then I watched him walk back to his cart and slam his clubs into his bag, cursing the whole time. LOL!
When I was in a woman’s golf league and maintaining a USGA handicap, I played by the rules of golf as best as I could; I used to read and study them, kept a USGA rule book in my golf bag and kept an accurate and legal score card, counting every stroke and taking every penalty every time I played, whether it was league play or not but I still played at a good pace. But when I wasn’t playing in a league or maintaining a handicap and playing just for fun and enjoyment, if I was having a really bad round, if I was lagging behind others in my foursome, I would pick up my ball and move forward just to keep up the pace of play. I’d estimate the strokes I realistically thought I would have made and added them to my score card if only for my own purposes. And I used to push my husband to play faster as he was notoriously slow.