The Muñoz & Pressel Slow Play Debacle on the LPGA Tour

Here are the facts: Morgan Pressel was hit with a tough 2 hole penalty after both she and Muñoz were put on the clock by LPGA officials. The LPGA says Pressel had taken 2:09 to play three shots and that was 39 seconds over the 30-second limit per shot. 

This makes me wonder what Muñoz' timing had been during the same period. Beyond that, had the LPGA simply set their sights on Pressel?

The facts behind the facts are that Muñoz and Pressel had been dueling turtles. After the match, Muñoz said, "I know I was slow and I really apologized for that and I told her, but I do feel both of us were slow and she was the only one getting penalized, and that was not fair and I know that. I would never make her lose a hole." 

Later, Muñoz was a little less diplomatic: "You know, I didn't do anything wrong. She lost the hole because she was slow, I wasn't. I was slow before, but not when the clock was on and that's when you can't be slow." A touch of guilt? Perhaps.

Slow play is evil.

The question is how to address the problem on the professional tours? The PGA tour clearly has no idea or they would be adding strokes to players' scorecards every week. Instead, there has been exactly one PGA tour player who is believed to have suffered a penalty in more than 15 years. That would be the sleep-inducing Glen "All" Day way back in 1995.

The LPGA is doing far better. They nailed five offenders in 2011 alone. The problem with going after Muñoz and Pressel is the Sybase is a match play event. There have to be two elements to the enforcement of any good rule. The first is adherence to the the letter of the law and the second is adherence to the spirit of the rule.

Rules on slow play are intended to protect the field. That's not as big a concern in match play, especially when the field has been reduced to little more than a handful of players. By dinging Pressel, with such harsh effect, the LPGA stayed too doggedly tied to the letter of Rule 6-7, but missed its spirit.

Matt Kuchar's Long Road to the PGA Tour's Players Championship

I've followed Matt Kuchar since his US Amateur win in 1997. When he won the Honda in 2002 I thought great things were ahead.

They were. It just took a tad longer than expected.

In winning The Players, I think Matt Kuchar has finally arrived. He is a man in full. Kuchar's a son, a husband and a father and he seems able to find a balance that has eluded others.

He's also arrived at the right age. At 33, Kuchar's a few years ahead of young guns like Rickie Fowler in terms of experience while his comparative youth grants him a nice edge on recent 40-somethings like Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk.

Now that Kuchar has shown he has what it takes to hoist the Players crystal I won't be at all surprised if he were to hoist this one next...

The Tiger Woods I'd Like to See

...But Never Will.

He'd call Sean Foley and tell him thanks for the little out-to-in practice swing; it's done wonders.

Then he'd have a press conference I'd title, Hello World Part Deux. TW would say that from here on in, he alone will be in charge of his swing.

Instead of a list of Nicklaus' major record on the wall, he'd start worshiping the ethos of Hogan and try to dig his game out of the earth.

By himself...

Does anyone really think he couldn't do it if he had the guts to try it? He knows what hurts his knee, or his achilles heel, or whatever injuries have come from his various hobbies from playing tough-guy with the Navy SEALs or a bunch of Perkins waitresses can inflict.

His swing would evolve into a creation of his own; a swing he would know better than anyone on the planet. It may not be swing that conforms to our aesthetic standards and maybe not even to his. Hank Haney might be interviewed about the top of Woods' swing position being 2 degrees off and the Konica Minolta BizHub SwingVision may show issues even Peter Kostis is sharp enough to identify.

But, the swing would belong to Tiger Woods and he's played enough great golf to finally have the pink slip for it.

And, slowly, his golfing brain would awaken at long last. I don't know if his recovery would be complete enough for him to get to 19, but I know it would be a hell of a good time to watch.

The PR-born image of Tiger Woods is gone forever. Anybody who still holds him up as a role model is naive or just plain stupid.

But, the Tiger Woods I'd like to see would have the power to re-invent his image as one of discovered self-reliance, come success or failure.

Too bad it will never happen.

Why Golf Is Hurting & Is Growing the Game a Good Thing?

First of all, is golf really hurting and if it is, relative to what? Golf's greatest financial boom corresponded with two certified black swan events: The advent of the internet and the ascension of Tiger Woods. Both Woods and the web are still around, both are still relevant, but things have changed.

More than anything I question the idea that golf can or should grow, at least like an economy or a population can grow. There are simply too many forms of recreation for any existing form to grow very much in terms of the percentage of the population. So, the percentage of people who play golf won't grow (or decline) much and neither will the percentages for tennis or bowling. Some people will play certain games and some won't.

 Of course, golf has always been hurt by slow play and cost. There's simply no way to make the game cheap. Like skiing, golf is a massively inefficient use of space for a relatively small number of participants. Golf's powers-that-be simply don't see slow play as an issue or they would have done something about it once they saw the first weekend hacker plumb-bob a 4 footer for triple bogey. Boo-hoo & ho-hum...

 What interests me is the wave of new golf services vying for the decreasing number of dollars the average golfer has in the bank. I've had new golfers come to me and ask if they need to be fitted (dollars), if they need a golf-specific trainer (dollars) and if they need a new TaylorMade R11s driver now that their R11 is almost a year old.

We shouldn't be surprised by this. As golf has grown its marketing efforts have become more sophisticated. Tiger Woods proved that golfers are athletes so if I'm a golfer I need a trainer and so on until the new golfer goes back to his other hobbies.

No one can blame the golf club fitters and trainers for being good at selling their wares. But, it's a fact that every dollar someone spends on products and services that are peripheral to golf is one fewer dollar that's available for greens fees.