Golf Special Report: A few problems with the slow pace of the sport (Part 1)
Where many people will associate the word ‘problem’ with Tiger Woods, they’re close, but not spot on. The current ranking is going all haywire making every critic go ga-ga, the Tour is signing more and more ‘lucrative’ contracts. The turtles seem faster
than the pace of the game and the golfers are winning money without even competing. Clearly, the PGA is facing some serious problems.
Let’s discuss the turtles first. Apart from those who live, eat and breathe golf, there is large mass outside this sphere that finds it rather difficult to follow this game on television.
One main reason behind the tough follow up is because it takes a total of 5 hours to watch one ROUND of this game and so a total of ten hours to watch the last TWO rounds of game on a weekend.
10 hours? Two rounds? One Weekend? That’s too much.
If the tournament is being played by the best players in the whole wide world, then it certainly shouldn’t take them such a long time to play ONE round of this game. Those players that are paired in twosomes in simple matches and tough competition shouldn’t
take FIVE hours, that’s not efficient.
Got to hand it to these guys though, they are playing a game that is worth a lot of dollar amount and their one bad stroke can weaken their whole position. They may play one bad stroke and end up losing prize money of $ 1.25 million or a two-year exemption.
But let’s be realistic for a while. One putt doesn’t require three minutes to hit, deciding a club to hit from rough cannot use five minutes and waiting for a green clearance does not require ten minutes.
Hit the Money:
The PGA needs to speed up the game and there is only one thing that can be done in such a situation, harsher penalties. The current age is all about hard work and the money awarded for it. Where many would disagree, some would approve that money is the only
language most people understand-and golfers are no exception.
You play slow, you get a penalty.
The NFL and Golf:
Where the earlier solution may seem a bit overrated, then it is time to introduce NFL.
The pace of the tournaments has gotten to a point where it is getting really hard to gain new fans, let alone retain the old ones.
NFL football is considered to be the most popular game in America and it isn’t famous because it has a large fan base that are ‘Die Hard’ in nature, golf has them too. It’s famous because it takes only three hours in total for an NFL fan to watch his favourite
game. We, the golf fans, sit for 5 hours. It’s easy for an NFL fan to enjoy a game that isn’t a saddle on his time.
The amount of time a golf fan would use to watch one round of golf is when a football fan can watch two games of NFL, over and out.
The other perspective:
One part of the world has football ruling, whereby many American hearts now travel to some completely opposite nations like Pakistan, India and Australia, their hearts are ruled by a game called cricket.
If golf takes 5 hours for three days then cricket is played over a time period of three to five days and takes at least six hours. If cricket isn’t a burden on their time, then why is golf?
With such variation in the type of fan base, the PGA may find it difficult to bring some massive changes in the time it takes for a full game to finish but they may impose some mild penalties on those that waste time.
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