More specifically, I want to talk about his “process”. If you listened to any of his interviews this weekend he talked a lot about “The Process” (pre-shot routine). Even during one of the biggest events in the world, he was able to stick to his routine shot after shot. You might think that as one of the best golfers in the world this “process” might be extensive and time consuming, but in reality it is quite the opposite. On every shot he would stand behind the ball, pick a target, come up to the ball, take a couple looks down the fairway and then fire away. He didn’t take 3 or 4 practice swings; he didn’t lull over the yardage book for 30 seconds. What he does is pick a target, stays committed to it, and gets up there and hits the ball. All this maybe took 15 to 20 seconds. Over the past 5-10 years there has been a movement in golf (not just junior golf) of expanding this “process” to the degree that it is affecting overall pace of play. What is unfortunate about it all is that we watch the Tour players on TV and want to emulate them because of who they are and what they have achieved, when in fact they may be the biggest culprits. What we can take from Rory and his “process” is that he is still able to achieve high accomplishment even with a “process” that is simple and quick.

How does this tie in with the Junior Tour? We received a lot of great responses to our email asking for suggestions on pace of play and I want to relay those to the entire membership as well as explain some policies/guidelines that many answer some questions that were attached to those emails.

Ways we all can improve our Pace of Play

• Be ready to play when it is your turn: We often times see players wait until the other player hits before they get their yardage, select their club, read their putt, etc. We encourage players to make an effort to minimize the time between shots within their group.
• Provisional Ball: If there is any chance that your shot may be lost or out of bounds, we highly encourage the player to play a provisional ball from where the last shot was played. Remember, the player must announce to his/her group that the second ball will be a provisional ball and must be played before going ahead to search for their original ball.
• Giving players a ride back to previous shot if ball is lost: If a rules official cannot be located in a reasonable amount of time to offer a ride, we encourage spectators/parents to drive the player back to their previous shot.
• Spectators moving ahead of tee shots: We highly encourage spectators to move ahead of the group while they play a hole so they will be able to help in locating errant golf shots. It seems to be a misnomer that spectators are not allowed to drive ahead of the group and look for golf balls, but we have and always will encourage this process. When searching for a golf ball please keep the cart on the path and walk to the area where the golf ball might be located. This will help in making sure we do not run over any golf balls.
• When walking to the putting green, be conscience of where the next hole is located. This will help in deciding where to place your bag down when you putt. If you place it on the path to the next teeing ground it will help in minimizing the amount of time spent walking across the green to the next tee.
• Over coaching while caddying: This was brought up quite a few times during the email responses and we agree that it is becoming an issue. The purpose of having caddies within the Micro divisions is to carry the players clubs, help with yardage and club selection, help in scoring and assist players in knowing when it is their turn to play. We feel caddies need to be a compliment to the player, not their coach. The caddies need to minimize helping line the player up (i.e. tell them, “a little left, no, now back a little right”), helping read greens, help in course strategy, etc. Will the player be penalized if their caddie does these things? No, it is all within the rules, but when you begin to back up play because you perform these duties on every shot, then that is when the issues can arise. The Micro division is a learning division and the more the player is on their own learning how to make their way around the course, the better the player will be down the road.

Why do they do it that way?

Have you ever asked yourself this question while at an event? We received some email responses that indicate that you might have so I wanted to go over a few policies and guidelines that may answer those questions.

Why are threesomes in front of twosomes sometimes to start the day causing a different pace for each group? Each tournament has a deadline seven days prior to the event. At that point we take a look at how many players we have in the field and figure out the best way to create the groupings. We then verify this with the golf course making sure we have the right amount of access to the course. After all that is taken care of, we then post the tee times online about five (5) days in advance. Now, from the day they are posted until the actual tournament day many changes take place with the groups, unfortunately. We understand that schedules change and players become sick so we try our best to add players to the field and combine groups but many times the groupings sheet gets a little “out of whack”. Even with our most diligent work there are many times where you will have groups of two (2) mixed in with groups of three (3).

Solution

For events on June 27th and beyond, we will be instituting a new procedure for sending out tee times. The deadlines will remain the same, 7 days prior, but instead of creating tee times right away we are going to send out an email providing the range of time that we will be using for the tee times as well as asking players that know they can not participate to please let us know as soon as possible. Hopefully this will give us a better idea of who can actually participate. We will then wait a couple more days and email and post tee times online three (3) days prior to the event. We feel the longer we wait to post tee times, the more finalized the field will be thus reducing the possibility of an unorganized tee sheet.

Why can’t they pair people of similar ability together so they can have a similar pace throughout the group? This may be the biggest misconception out there that the reason a player plays slow is because they are playing bad. In fact sometimes, the complete opposite may be true. You may have a really experienced player that takes his/her time and they actually have a slower pace than a player who is struggling.  To some extent, we do pair players by ability when we pair them with players within their division. I think some would like them paired down more within their division, but we do not feel strong enough that this would help in speeding up play. One of those quotes you hear sometimes is, “you don’t have to play slow to play bad”.

Why do the Masters division players always go first? It is our feeling that in general the older, more experienced player has the ability to play at a quicker pace. Now, that may contradict my previous paragraph, but I feel you may understand why I say that. We feel that by having the most experienced players on the course first, it will give us the best chance to have a decent pace of play throughout the day. Now sometimes that may not work. You could have a few slow older, Masters groups, but that is less out of the norm than starting with the younger beginner type players that might struggle from the start.

Solution

In the coming weeks, we will experiment with starting different groups out front and see if the pace differs. Our hope is that we will find a balance that we can work with throughout the remainder of the season.

Let’s make a pact. We at the office will continue to work on better ways to help keep up pace of play, and we would hope that you would take a few of the pointers above and apply it to your game during your next event. 

Kind Regards,

Steve and Lissa

TGA Junior Tour Office