World No. 1 Golfer Luke Donald stated the obvious on his Twitter account when he openly spoke against how slow playing is ruining the game. His exact words from his tweet were:
‘It’s not that hard, be ready when it’s your turn. Slow play is killing our sport’
Indeed one of the biggest and controversial issue in the golfing world currently is the growing instances of slow play. With higher monetary prizes and prestige in stake it is acceptable that players need enough time to carefully play their shots and not rush through. However the time some players are taking border on the ridiculous.
National Golf Publications release a list every year for the worst offenders of the season however even the shame of being branded as a slow-coach has not deterred any of those players from taking their own sweet time to take their shot.
Luke Donald even suggested a way to speed up play on the putting greens. His exact words from his tweet were:
‘If u r second to putt, why not read your putt while the player 1 is reading his. 30 secs saved there = 35 mins saved for the round #simple’
The idea is great, but at the end of the day even he, like other professional golfers have realized that the fight against slow play will go nowhere unless the authorizing bodies do not take action and enforce guidelines to the offenders. As he tweeted:
‘I could rant all day long, don’t think anything will ever change as the slow players don’t realize they are slow ‘
Luke Donald’s comments are a testament to the fact that the golfing population has dwindled partly due to the amount of time it takes to play a round.