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Time to speed things up on PGA Tour: Other notes

Submitted by SHNS on Thu, 03/06/2008 - 13:52

Hit ... the ... ball!That's a familiar lament, from clogged municipal courses to the game's highest levels. Slow play remains a persistent and perplexing issue in golf -- enough so for two of the world's top five players to hop into the fray."This has been an ongoing problem on the PGA Tour for a long time," Tiger Woods wrote on his Web site last week. "I honestly believe the pace of play is faster in Europe and Japan. It has been suggested offenders be penalized with strokes. The problem is, you may get one guy (who) slows down a group for playing at a snail's pace and gets them all put on the clock, which isn't fair. I know this is a complicated issue. Hopefully, it can be addressed in the near future."Woods deserves credit for raising the topic unsolicited -- because he's Tiger, people will listen -- but we nominate Adam Scott to deliver discipline to the dawdlers. Scott cut through the diplomacy when he said over the weekend, "People play way, way too slow. They should start penalizing people. Just penalize them."Now, that's the spirit.PGA Tour officials spend too much time worrying about the potential backlash from players. What's the point of even having a pace-of-play policy (Rule 6-7) without enforcing it? The last PGA Tour player to receive a one-stroke penalty for slow play, according to the Associated Press, was Dillard Pruitt in 1992.That results, in part, from players speeding up once they are put "on the clock" for falling out of position. It also speaks to unnecessary skittishness over handing out punishment. The LPGA Tour, unlike its male counterpart, has showed the chutzpah to act rather than perpetually bemoan the problem.LPGA officials made pace-of-play a high priority this season, which became clear in the first tournament of the year in Hawaii. Angela Park was in contention in the final round Feb. 16, when she took too long to hit a shot while on the clock -- and a rules official gave her a two-stroke penalty. Park complained, but here's guessing she will start playing more quickly.The LPGA has developed a system in which it can target one specific player, not an entire group, for slow play. "We felt this was an issue not only for us, but it reflects on all of golf -- on tours, at clubs, wherever you play," said Jane Geddes, the tour's vice president of competition. "We wanted to make it very clear there's something you can do about it, and show people it's possible to play fast and play well."FIERY FREDDIE: Woods' monthly newsletter also included this reaction to the appointment of Fred Couples as captain of the U.S. team for next year's Presidents Cup at Harding Park in San Francisco: "People don't realize how fiery this guy is. He's as fiery as they come and I can't wait to play for him. ... Freddie knows how the players think and what we want, and I think he'll do an incredible job."Couples strikes us as an inspired choice -- he and international captain Greg Norman were among the game's most dashing figures in the late 1980s and early '90s -- but he obviously hides his "fiery" side. Couples didn't seem fiery when he amiably bumped fists with Phil Mickelson during their final-round duel at the 2006 Masters.Or can you picture Woods bumping fists with any opponent, ever, during competition?TAP-INS: Ernie Els' victory Sunday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. -- his first PGA Tour win since 2004 -- moved him past Steve Stricker into the No. 3 spot in this week's world rankings. ... Stanford's Conrad Ray recently was named coach of the U.S. team for this year's Palmer Cup, a match-play event pitting American college players against those from Europe.(E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick@sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)