Why a shot clock is worth trialling at tournaments

Three hours in your local 12-hole winter league is questionable but three hours for nine holes at a PGA TOUR event is downright taking the p**s.

It’s not a new problem, this is not the first and definitely not the last slow play rant but it seems a never-ending issue for the PGA Tour and golf as a whole.

Particularly when you think of what other sports have been doing to pick up the pace.

CBS on-course reporter Dottie Pepper hit the nail on the head over the weekend when she gave her tuppence worth on the snails pace spectacle at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.”You know, Frank (Nobilo), I think we’re starting to need a new word to talk about this pace of play issue, and it’s respect,” Pepper said. “For your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasts, for all of it. It’s just gotta get better.”

The buzz word throughout the last three years of strife as the feud between the main tours and LIV Golf rumbles on is “product.” But golf as a whole from top to bottom is falling short in that regard.

Patrick Cantlay’s truffle shuffle pre-shot routine is not solely to blame.

We have seen a shot clock implemented on the TGL, but even that is too long and doesn’t encourage the players to speed up their pre-shot routines.

Whatever sport you like, the common denominator is that we all want the spectacle to flow as best as it can.

Shot clocks have been a huge addition in this regard and it’s time that golf introduced one.

This doesn’t necessarily mean to just introduce a blanket shot clock across the board, this is something that can be phased in at selected tournaments.

We saw last weekend with the opening round of the Allianz Football League the impact the new rules have had on improving the spectacle of Gaelic football and this will only improve as players get out of their old habits and adapt their own game to the new rules.

Hopefully if a shot clock was introduced in a handful of tournaments on the PGA TOUR, players would grow out of their slow and laborious habits and carry a faster pace into events all year round.

Shot clocks are used in several sports including basketball, rugby, tennis, ten-pin bowling, and various cue sports.

As an avid snooker fan I enjoy the long frame, four session matches and I admire the tactical safety play, particularly when it is displayed by some of the absolute best.

However, like a stalemate game in football, it can drag on which is why the snooker shootout has become an extremely popular event as it negates the boring safety play.

For the first 5 minutes of the match, players have 15 seconds per shot, but for the last 5 minutes this is reduced to 10 seconds

Snooker, known as a boring sport, becomes entertaining for the neutral or casual fan.

Why can’t golf follow suit? Even a 40 second shot clock in the TGL is too long. There’s no jeopardy there. Should it take 40 seconds to hit a ball into a screen when you already have all the information and don’t need to factor that into your pre shot routine?

It’s not just the men who are sitting down on the ground at tee boxes as three groups get log jammed onto the one hole.

After a clumsy three-putt bogey from the back fringe on the 10th hole of the AIG Women’s Open the last thing Leona Maguire would have wanted to be facing into was a near 60 minute wait on the eleventh tee.

Absolutely ridiculous.

We are all guilty of slow play.

From a broadcasting point of view, it’s a disaster too, and as Justin Thomas’ recent letter to his fellow PGA TOUR members acknowledges, complacency on the issue is no longer acceptable.

The fans are being take for granted.

The PGA TOUR think that reducing fields and ultimately diluting the product even further will reduce slow play. Yet pace of play at major championships and the signature events is still a huge issue.

Expecting audiences to dedicate six hours of their weekend, never mind one night to watching golf only emphasises the stark disconnection between the professional game and the club game.