Patrick Cantlay’s putter might as well be a pendulum swinging back and forth inside a grandfather clock, measuring time by the minutes it takes him to strike the ball.
His wiggling and waggling when standing over a putt, before finally pulling the blade back into pinball launch position, is maddening to witness. Playing the first two rounds of the Memorial Tournament with Billy Horschel and Hideki Matsuyama, Cantlay consistently took longer than his playing partners after settling over his ball at address.
At least the two-time Memorial winner is not a calendar whose timetable is counted in days, weeks and months, even if sometimes it feels that way.
Slow play is a hot topic on the PGA Tour, and Cantlay is the poster snail, his sluggish pace of play, mostly around the green, a burning issue during the Masters, when millions of TV viewers – and fast-moving Brooks Koepka playing in the group behind him – wanted to scream, “Hurry up, already.”
But while Cantlay is at the center of the slow play discussion, my thoughts on the subject go against the grain of those wringing their hands over concern that he and other slowpoke compadres create a negative perception that endangers fan interest and jeopardizes the health of the tour.
My alternative take goes like this: slow play is not an alarming issue for the Tour, but instead an individual frustration for fans.
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Tom Kim stands on the ninth fairway during the second round of the Memorial Tournament golf tournament at the Muirfield Village Golf Club. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports
Allow me to explain. Pace of play matters little on TV, which is how most fans watch golf tournaments. It doesn’t matter that amateur sensation Sam Bennett took forever to hit his approach shots at Muirfield Village Golf Club, regripping his club four and five times before beginning his backswing, because his group was not featured on the broadcast. If you don’t see slow play, does it really exist? Plus, TV minimizes the visual effects of slow play by cutting from player to player, a kind of slow-play sleight of hand.
As for slow play turning 4½-hour rounds into fivers, who besides the TV crew trying to make their dinner reservations really cares? I watch golf and seldom think, ‘This is taking too long. Time to mow the grass.’ I only exit the broadcast early if the leaderboard is a “Who’s He?” more than a Who’s Who.
The reality is that amateur golfers of my ilk like to complain about slow play because we project our own wait-on-every-shot experiences onto the tour pros who remind us of that agonizingly slow foursome playing in front of us, the one we blame for turning our coulda-been-a-82 into a more realistic 95.
We can’t stand watching Cantlay take forever over a putt because we’ve been stuck behind a high-handicap iteration of him at our muni or country club.
Of course, many of us are the slow player we despise, but in our lack of self-awareness we justify our slog pace as inevitable, blaming it on failing to find our ball in the too-thick rough or after searching those inconveniently-placed woods (beware the poison ivy, people).
But despite taking entirely too long to look for balls and not being ready to hit when it is our turn, there are times when we play at an acceptable pace only to slam up against a) saunterers who move at the speed of glacial melt; b) multiple riding carts crisscrossing the fairway 200 yards away; and c) the Rory McIlroy wannabe who waits to hit his second shot on a par-5 despite being 320 yards from the green.
Such scar tissue, mostly formed through our impatience, causes us to go berserk when we see Cantlay shift his weight for a fifth time on the green, or Keegan Bradley advancing and retreating in the fairway like a shy middle school boy practicing to ask a girl on a date, or rolling our eyes when Viktor Hovland and an increasing number of others test a green’s slope by straddling the putting line and rocking side to side as if trying to maintain balance on a boat in choppy waters.
Does that mean it is perfectly fine for tour players to take their sweet time whenever they want? No. There is something called consideration of others that should enter a slow player’s thinking, whether in contention on Sunday or grinding to make the cut.
Plus, what player wants to hear snarky comments about his laggardly play? Cantlay can’t enjoy reading how the sponsor name on his golf bag should be changed from DeWalt to DeWait. But he can silence his critics in one easy – and quicker – step. Pick up the pace.
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