{"id":311,"date":"2023-03-13T19:25:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T19:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/?p=311"},"modified":"2023-03-13T21:02:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T21:02:34","slug":"a-good-crawl-spoiled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/?p=311","title":{"rendered":"A Good Crawl Spoiled"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 13, 2023<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Spieth and caddie ponder the mysteries of a 100-yd wedge shot
(Business Insider)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cGolf is a good walk spoiled,\u201d Mark Twain may or may not have said, but someone said it, and just as cancel culture has demanded bowdlerization of many Twain classics, so too should this phrase be amended.\u00a0 \u201cGolf is a good crawl spoiled\u201d now seems far more apt in consideration of the six and seven hour slogs now deemed normal on the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n

Scottie Scheffler picked up another convincing win Sunday at a Tournament Players Championship beset by ponderously slow play, that in the end, worked to his benefit.\u00a0 This week\u2019s tournament marked the fifth consecutive time that Friday\u2019s second round had to be completed over the weekend before a cut line could be established.\u00a0 In a rapidly changing sports landscape where brevity is desired (or so they say) and even the glacial pace of baseball is being cattle-prodded with a pitch clock, the PGA Tour continues to look the other way while players and caddies hold ten-minute symposiums on each and every shot, and groups on the green resemble garden snails on a lazy afternoon, casually lining up putts without a care in the world.<\/p>\n

Scheffler played in the afternoon group on Friday and was only able to complete 10 holes as high winds and hard greens seemingly ossified the best players in the world.\u00a0 Play was suspended at 4:27 EST and Scheffler teed off at 12:56\u2014it took him 3 hours and 31 minutes to play 10 holes!\u00a0 That translates to a six-hour and twenty minute round.\u00a0 And since he started on the front nine, he never came close to having to deal with the treacherous 17th<\/sup>-hole island green, or the equally treacherous water looming along the left side of the 18th<\/sup> hole.\u00a0 These holes are the most difficult on the course and balls were finding water all afternoon as if they were divining rods, but almost 40 players never had to play them with the super windy conditions, and with greens baked dry by the afternoon sun.\u00a0 Instead, Scheffler and a slew of others got to go home for the night, have a nice meal, a nice slumber, and then tackle these holes Saturday morning in windless conditions with soft pristine greens.\u00a0 Notions of competitive imbalance created by the stoppages were conveniently not discussed.<\/p>\n

Media darling Jordan Spieth is one of the worst offenders.\u00a0 He and caddie Michael Greller are likeable fellows and Spieth\u2019s wizardry around the greens is special to watch, but the two of them talk over every shot as if they\u2019re splitting the atom.\u00a0 No detail is too small, and the two navel-gaze over every decision like the fate of the world is at stake.\u00a0 These tedious interactions are then followed by an endless series of practice swings before Jordan finally settles in to take a swipe at the ball.\u00a0 Then a post-analysis follows as Jordan waves his hands and complains about the wind direction or his club selection before finally moving up the fairway.\u00a0 Jordan is also part of the forever-growing \u201cstroll club\u201d whose members find it perfectly fine to walk all the way up to the green and back on 130-yard shots to assess their landing spots. They never make these strolls hastily either; it\u2019s all about me.<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s good pal Justin Thomas plays like molasses as well.\u00a0 He and caddie Bones Mackay have afternoon tea before every move as they breezily discuss routine shots.\u00a0 My weekend foursome makes it around in 4 to 4 \u00bd hours and we\u2019re hitting it all over the lot, but three PGA Tour players in a group can\u2019t get finished in over six hours.\u00a0 It\u2019s ludicrous, and it should stop.\u00a0 The PGA Tour pooh-bahs are in the process of bastardizing the game to fend off the LIV Tour encroachment, but they fail to address a simple issue that has been a problem for years and that is making the game insufferable for many viewers, not to mention the bettors the Tour now heartily engenders, who are left twisting in the wind (joke intended) with the fuzzy demarcation of rounds carrying over to the next day.<\/p>\n

With the Tour now bending over backwards to embrace ideas they scoffed at a year ago when LIV introduced them, they might be wise to consider the shotgun starts of the rival tour.\u00a0 I hate the idea, but in the absence of any penalties for slow play, I fear many of the peach-faced golfers we see teeing it up in the morning may be sporting full beards by the time they make it back to the clubhouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 13, 2023 \u201cGolf is a good walk spoiled,\u201d Mark Twain may or may not have said, but someone said it, and just as cancel culture has demanded bowdlerization of many Twain classics, so too should this phrase be amended.\u00a0 \u201cGolf is a good crawl spoiled\u201d now seems far more apt in consideration of the … Continue reading A Good Crawl Spoiled<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[642,635,637,641,636,293,634,640,639],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palmdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}