What should the penalty be for slow play?

I think the mentality for local courses will be "I paid for this so I'll take all the time I want".. even if they get assessed a penalty, they'll just take it off their card at the end of the round.

Being told to pick up and move, let others play thru, being removed eventually will be the only way to address the "everyday" golfer/hacker

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ALL of the tours know who are the anchors out there. You don’t put the “group” on the clock, you put the individual on the clock. Not per hole but per shot. After the tee shots- first guy gets 60 seconds. Since the others are almost always standing at or near their balls, they get 45 with a chime warning at 30. If, however they are waiting on players putting, they get 30 seconds once green is clear. They should be doing all their “math” while they wait (looking at you BDC). Euro Tour has at least one event with the clock and time saved was around 30-45 minutes.
PGA tour has penalized a couple of players for time in the last couple of years- unknown amateurs and journeymen on a Thursday.


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Loss of the putter until they catch up, if they don't, loss of driver. Keep pulling out clubs until they catch up. Easy peasy.
 
I guess my example is at a private course so it's a little different.

First warning came from the Marshall and it was noted in the tee sheet system.

Next warning from the Marshall was followed by a call from the head pro.

Third on course warning resulted in a meeting with the board where if bad enough the board could decide to take booking privileges away.

No one ever got further than a call from the pro. People started to take notice once rules were actually being enforced and began to listen. The problem is too many places just talk about rules or making changes but are too scared to actually enforce them.


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I think a .5 stroke penalty is the way to go. A full stroke is too much. But it shouldn’t be nothing. So .5 makes it like... your score with an asterisk. You’d only drop a shot to the guy who shot the same as you but didn’t play slow. Of course multiple penalties could really add up, but a single penalty wouldn’t.


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On tour its simple. Deduct FedEx points. Not a ton, but enough to get their attention
 
Take a page out of poker and have a handful of time extensions, otherwise shotclock with stroke penalty.
 
Sox_Fan;n8622963 said:
If more than a hole opens up ahead, I think a penalty should be assessed for not keeping up pace of play. I would say 1 stroke for the first offense during a round and 2 strokes if the same issue occurs within that round. The tough part to me is who to assess it to. I don't think it is fair to penalize the whole group for the slow play of one particular individual. To me, that is where it gets sticky.

I think this is also a tough situation due to the possibility of one or two players having a bad couple of holes. If two in a group A hit into deep rough, and spend the full 3 minutes searching for their balls (and find them.) then play a few more shots to finish the hole while the group (group B) ahead is playing beautifully, it is certainly feasible that there would be a large gap on the course. I don't think think Group A should be penalized for not playing well.
 
RayG;n8628067 said:
ALL of the tours know who are the anchors out there.

I'd like to see them pair up those known anchors as much as possible and then actually enforce pace violations with strokes added. The players who most need policing would be pressuring each other to step it up (I'd love to be a fly on the wall) and faster players would be somewhat insulated from the extra pressure, drama, and annoyance of playing with those snails.
 
Sox_Fan;n8622963 said:
If more than a hole opens up ahead, I think a penalty should be assessed for not keeping up pace of play. I would say 1 stroke for the first offense during a round and 2 strokes if the same issue occurs within that round. The tough part to me is who to assess it to. I don't think it is fair to penalize the whole group for the slow play of one particular individual. To me, that is where it gets sticky.

I agree. I HATED when a teacher would penalize the entire class by docking recess, etc because of the behavior of one or a few (never mind that sometimes I was the one causing it, but it ticked me off when I wasn’t:)).

I did like that Euro Tour event where they had a shot clock. Something like that put into play in every event? If you don’t get the play off before the time clock expires in football, it’s called delay of gain and it’s a 5 yard penalty. Same idea in basketball, you don’t get the shot off in time you lose possession. Now granted they don’t speed up the game, but they do penalize the team for taking more than the allotted time.

I played a super slow 9 yesterday and it stunk. 3 hours. Had we gone off the other nine we’d have probably still caught the group that was slowing things up several holes in front of us. I’d have called the clubhouse but I know they wouldn’t have done anything from past experiences there. Sigh. This on a super short course too. Perhaps too short as everyone thinks they can reach most of the 4’s because one time they were 10 yards off. We had a 2 some join up with our 2 some because it was so slow. Neither of them carried it more than 225 or so but they’d wait for the green to clear on a 320 hole. Honestly didn’t care because it wasn’t making it any slower and as hard as it was they were getting fairly close with the rollout, like 25ish or so on the shortest of the holes.

Just had a thought..... I’m like the slow play on the forum, wading through all my random thoughts to maybe get to a point if I even had one, lol.
 
Daddio;n8875389 said:
I'd like to see them pair up those known anchors as much as possible and then actually enforce pace violations with strokes added. The players who most need policing would be pressuring each other to step it up (I'd love to be a fly on the wall) and faster players would be somewhat insulated from the extra pressure, drama, and annoyance of playing with those snails.

Exactly, the pokes go out last on Thursday and Friday. Everybody is on the clock. Since many will not make the cut after the penalties, Weekend pace should pick up nicely.
 
warning/ penalty stroke/ disqualification
 
man i had a rough experience with slow play today. had the first tee time of the day, paired with 3 strangers who were kin. they weren’t very good at golf which is fine. one was quick enough. the other was never ready. but the worst was the son, who was maybe 13 or 14 years old. his preshot routine was 70-80 seconds. for every shot. and he topped, chunked, sliced, and hooked a lot of shots. he also had no concept of ready golf.

the bizarre thing was his dad (the quicker) and uncle both knew how much of a problem he was. they said they’ve tried to help him with his pace, but he refuses to listen.

as the first time out, we were the pace setters. and we failed miserably. the group behind jumped us, and the next group up waited on us a ton. hit into us a few times too.

at one point, the dad said i could go on by myself. i said i was fine, but as the kids pace wore me down, i took him up on his offer after we finished 9. my hope was the group in front would have put some distance between us and i could get several holes in as a single. i was wrong. they were in the fairway when i got up to the tee box. the group i bailed on caught up with me and i had to rejoin them. they were very gracious and we laughed, but i felt really bad.

the round took over 5 hours. i had visions of playing early and getting home before lunch. instead i got home after 2pm. not what i was hoping for.
 
Boy is that tough. entire course slowed down for the whole day
 
man i had a rough experience with slow play today. had the first tee time of the day, paired with 3 strangers who were kin. they weren’t very good at golf which is fine. one was quick enough. the other was never ready. but the worst was the son, who was maybe 13 or 14 years old. his preshot routine was 70-80 seconds. for every shot. and he topped, chunked, sliced, and hooked a lot of shots. he also had no concept of ready golf.

the bizarre thing was his dad (the quicker) and uncle both knew how much of a problem he was. they said they’ve tried to help him with his pace, but he refuses to listen.

as the first time out, we were the pace setters. and we failed miserably. the group behind jumped us, and the next group up waited on us a ton. hit into us a few times too.

at one point, the dad said i could go on by myself. i said i was fine, but as the kids pace wore me down, i took him up on his offer after we finished 9. my hope was the group in front would have put some distance between us and i could get several holes in as a single. i was wrong. they were in the fairway when i got up to the tee box. the group i bailed on caught up with me and i had to rejoin them. they were very gracious and we laughed, but i felt really bad.

the round took over 5 hours. i had visions of playing early and getting home before lunch. instead i got home after 2pm. not what i was hoping for.
Dad has to take the reigns here, especially if they already knew it was an issue. Overall, sounds like they were nice enough but time for junior to learn.

Were you walking or riding?
 
For every 5 mins off pace $5/player.
 
Slow players should be drawn and quartered
 
There should be no penalty for slow play, anymore than there should be a penalty for playing to fast.

Everyone is entitled to their own pace of play. They paid their fees the same as everyone else.

If a course wants to levy penalties for slow play, I suspect it would be a short lived experiment due to loss of business.

I don't care for slow play anymore than anyone else i just deal with it with my preshot routine. I don't blame my poor play on others.

Fact of the matter is that slow play is just another part of golf. Nothing can be done about it. Not without some sort of discrimination being involved.
 
There should be no penalty for slow play, anymore than there should be a penalty for playing to fast.

Everyone is entitled to their own pace of play. They paid their fees the same as everyone else.

If a course wants to levy penalties for slow play, I suspect it would be a short lived experiment due to loss of business.

I don't care for slow play anymore than anyone else i just deal with it with my preshot routine. I don't blame my poor play on others.

Fact of the matter is that slow play is just another part of golf. Nothing can be done about it. Not without some sort of discrimination being involved.
But one of them is courses mandated and in the rules of golf. There is no penalty or rule being broken for fast play.
 
For the tour pro, I would prefer that actual round times are captured and analyzed like any other stat in golf. The guys below some threshold should loose fedex points and some level of privalage.

On a public course, much more complicated. Our main course does not have the budget for a marshal or starter. However, what burns me is that they could at least have a sign on 1, 5, 10, 14 telling people where they are and what is expected
 
Dad has to take the reigns here, especially if they already knew it was an issue. Overall, sounds like they were nice enough but time for junior to learn.

Were you walking or riding?

they tried. they weren’t stern enough though. oh and another awesome thing the kid did: he would drop if he didn’t like the shot and go through the whole damn routine again. his dad and uncle were very frustrated with him. they were playing again this afternoon, but the kid wasn’t going to play. maybe me being there kept them from being as stern with him as they usually are?
 

A tad aggressive but IIRC your in Canada and probably haven’t seen a course in a while so I get the frustration, 😂.
 
they tried. they weren’t stern enough though. oh and another awesome thing the kid did: he would drop if he didn’t like the shot and go through the whole damn routine again. his dad and uncle were very frustrated with him. they were playing again this afternoon, but the kid wasn’t going to play. maybe me being there kept them from being as stern with him as they usually are?
Maybe eh?

You want the kid to have a good time and everything, but there’s also learned respect to your group and others who are on the course.

What tees was the group playing from?
 
My kids when they were learning either kept pace or picked up. They only had to pick up once.

This has led my good golfing kid to being the quickest youth golfer I’ve seen. He often had already putted out before the rest of his group gets to the green.

I respect that but I think it can hurt him at times, especially on unfamiliar courses with tough greens. I’d like to gather as much info as I could, but I also can’t read greens worth a damn and he can.
 
There should be no penalty for slow play, anymore than there should be a penalty for playing to fast.

Everyone is entitled to their own pace of play. They paid their fees the same as everyone else.

If a course wants to levy penalties for slow play, I suspect it would be a short lived experiment due to loss of business.

I don't care for slow play anymore than anyone else i just deal with it with my preshot routine. I don't blame my poor play on others.

Fact of the matter is that slow play is just another part of golf. Nothing can be done about it. Not without some sort of discrimination being involved.

I think this is a huge difference between public and private courses. Public it's extremely hard to enforce, private is fairly easy to provide penalties and warnings.
 
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