A fun story by serial PGA Tour observer (er, basher), Geoff Shackelford. Read here his thoughts on slow play on Tour and how they could use ShotLink data to actually do something about it. It's been 16 years (yes, you read that right) since a fine was imposed on a player in a Tour event. Now that is impossible - except for the fact that the Tour has decided not to make the players ever receive a penalty, even though everyone knows it is absolutely ridiculous for a round of golf to take more than 4 hours.
Growing up playing golf we would regularly play in 2 1/2 hours - that's 4 people playing their own ball. No running, just walking swiftly between shots and hitting it when it was your turn. When will the Tour and other official bodies realize that in this "instant world" kids don't want to spend 5 hours playing golf. They don't want to spend 5 hours watching either and as a result, Tiger or no Tiger the TV numbers are down. All of the governing bodies have a responsibility to get the game moving - if they don't the slow professional game of golf will continue to slowly erode the fan base and kids will simply go do something which takes up less time. Go on PGA Tour - fine someone and see what happens!
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