I watched the Women’s World Curling Championship last weekend (Canada won 🙂 ) and a crazy idea popped into my head. During the curling game, each team has 38 minutes to thinking time over the space of a two hour game. The details on how the timing is applied is not important, but what it does is forces teams to play at a certain pace and not waste time talking a chatting about every shot thrown. I am thinking that this is a great idea for golf, but applied in slightly different manner.

During a round of golf in a professional tournament, it is not unusual to see timings for completion hover around 5+ hours. Sometimes it is longer as we watch some players mover slower that molasses oozing down a frozen hill in winter. Currently, the rules of golf on the PGA Tour have timings clocked per shot; the first player in each group has 50 seconds to hit their shot, while each subsequent player gets 40 seconds. This equates to 55 minutes of hitting time and 4+ hours of walking. As I watch golf on TV, I sometimes find it long and boring and way too many commercials. Hence, I have reduced my golf watching drastically over the past very years.

To fix my disinterest in watching golf on TV, I came up with an idea to move things along. Lets put a timing on the total amount of time spent on the course. I recommend that each player has 4.5 hours to play a round of golf. If they do not complete their round in that time, penalty strokes will be applied. I realize that there are many different questions about the how to get this done (especially when one player is dragging down the group) but I am sure some smart people can figure this out. The goal will be to have a round completed in 4.5 hours or less.

I know there are rules in place for groups that get out position, but rarely are they enforced. Additionally, the players are already playing so slow that getting out of position is ridiculous. I understand the financial cost of trying to speed up players, but if the ratings are dropping due to slow play something has to be done.

I realize this is a bit of a rant today, but I enjoy watching golf on TV and the current practices of 5+ rounds of golf takes all the fun out of my leisure time. I am sure I am not the first person to think about this type of change, but those are my thoughts for today. What do you think?

I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!