Etiquette section

[John Morrissett]

Mike -

Thank you for the comments and good points. It is refreshing to see a college coach decry the pace of play in collegiate events. It has been frustrating to me to hear several coaches tell officials that the "players will play as slowly as you [the officials] let them," without taking any responsibility for their players' pace.

David and I did look at the Etiquette section and quickly (too quickly?) decided it was pretty darn good, with little room for meaningful change. I have to admit, though, that we did not spend a huge amount of time on that section, as the priority of the project was the Definition and actual Rules.

The main theme of our project was to simplify the Rules. While an improved pace of play would be a nice side effect of the changes, pace of play was not a driving theme in the work. It would be interesting to take a look at the Rules with pace of play as the paramount concern and see where that approach would take us.

In the 1960s the USGA experimented with continuous putting in stroke play and gave up on the idea after a few years. They found that the pace of play did not improve and that there were some awkward situations. The fact that there was an actual trial of this approach makes me uneasy to return to it. If done properly, the current system should work well (i.e., while you are looking over your putt, your fellow-competitor can be playing).

As for standing on another player's line, in dry conditions your suggestion makes plenty of sense (and in wet conditions there is the principle that a player is entitled to the line of putt gave him and would therefore be able to repair any damage made by the other player). However, with some of the aggressive "spike" designs out there and soft conditions, I could see a player being quite upset at having another player stand on his line of putt. For example, late in the day (after a lot of play and with the lower sun), some greens can still look awfully uneven around the hole from the "spikeless" traffic around it that day.

You are certainly right that we should not shy away from radical ideas to improve the pace of play, so keep them coming!

Best regards,
John