Editorial: Slow Play Rule

After being nailed, that group sped up on the 17th hole. This in turn caused a gap to develop for the next group, and when they reached the 17th, they, too, were put on the clock. It's not like they were playing all that slowly: it's just a combination of the tricky 16th hole and the increased speed of the group ahead of them that caused them to fall behind. Young-A Yang proceeded to make a hash of the 17th hole thanks to the penalty situation, and she, too, was assessed a two shot penalty.

In fact, it's possible that the leading group, who also ended up falling a hole behind as they finished 17, could have been put on the clock. Imagine if that had happened, and it resulted in Sherri Steinhauer, who was doubtless quite nervous at the time as she approached her first win in five years, got a two shot penalty. She would have dropped back into a tie with Grace, and Grace might have won. The whole tournament could have been decided on the basis of a penalty!

So my first problem with this penalty is that it does not take into account situations like the 16th hole, where groups can get caught up, only to be able to easily make up the ground once they are off that hole. To put a group on the clock as soon as they get a hole behind the group in front of them seems to be jumping the gun. If it were my call, I'd give them a few holes to see if they can make the ground up naturally before nailing them.

Grace is phoning her agent asking about the new
slow play rules. Just kidding!

Secondly, putting one of the final groups on the clock with just a few holes to go seems utterly pointless to me. The whole reason to have this rule is to speed up play for everyone, so that fans don't get bored waiting for the action to pick up. But when the event is on the line, the drama is naturally there; fans are not bored. To my mind, the greater sin that close to the end of the tournament is to greatly change the result because a player takes ten extra seconds to hit a shot, rather than to have to wait that ten extra seconds.

Thirdly, I am concerned by the timing of this. I am not sure when exactly the LPGA came up with this, but I only heard about it three weeks ago. I hope they told the players this was coming at the end of last year, but if they didn't, then they have unfairly impacted some of the players. The players deserved to have an off-season to work on speeding up their routine. If they did not get it, then certain players are being asked to change what might be years of routine in a few weeks timespan, while others who are naturally faster don't suffer. In particular, this impacts some of the Asian players, notably Grace Park, Mi Hyun Kim and Gloria Park, all of whom are known to be, shall we say, deliberate on course. Two of the three players who got nailed in the final round last week were Asian, although we can hope that this was just an anomaly and not a trend we will see from now on (there have been two other slow play penalties assessed since the new rules were instituted, one to an amateur and the other to an unnamed player at the Franklin Mortgage event in Tennessee).

To those who would say, 'if they're playing slowly, then they should suffer the consequences', I would reply that these players in fact had not been violating the rules as they stood at the start of 2004, so probably never expected they would suddenly have to speed up their routines.

Gloria Park is another Korean player who
is known for slow play