One of the funnier golf moments of 2018 was last February when people tuning in for the Grammy Awards on CBS ended up getting a lengthy dose of J.B. Holmes waiting to play a shot at the Farmers Insurance Open.
Holmes is notorious for his slow play, and it’s egregious enough that even the normally passive world of American golf broadcasting has been willing to call him out for it. Today, with Holmes playing in the final group at the Genesis Open at Riviera, audiences have gotten a steady dose of Holmes and his particular brand of slow play. Here, for example, is Peter Kostis pointing out that Holmes has no need to take 1:20 to hit a putt when he could have been running through most of his routine when his playing partners were putting.
JB Holmes takes an eternity to putt pic.twitter.com/uiAS1eBpEF
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) February 17, 2019
(Holmes followed that miss up by plumb-bobbing a 1-footer, which is absolutely hilarious.)
If you're plumb bobbing a 1 foot putt with me I'm throwing your bag in a lake pic.twitter.com/uCrceicFaE
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) February 17, 2019
Later, it was Ian Baker-Finch (not exactly known as an overly critical commentator) who jumped in as Holmes took forever to pull the trigger over an approach shot. (This clip is only the final 30 seconds, there was quite a bit before, as well.)
The issue is more than cosmetic, and Holmes is clearly not the only offender. The pace of play today for the whole field has been comically slow, and it’s a real problem if golf wants to remain a viable television property going forward.
Average NFL game is 3 hours, 12 minutes. NBA clocks in at 2 hours, 20 minutes. For all its time woes, the MLB averaged 3 hours last year. Call it indifference or aloofness, but continuing to ask fans for a 6-hour investment on Sunday is putting golf down a dangerous path https://t.co/mc5I34PNDI
— Joel Beall (@JoelMBeall) February 17, 2019
Golf struggles enough with perception, in a multitude of ways, and there’s honestly no reason the pace of play should be this much of a concern. Pro players have pushed the limits with various routines and calculations, but what’s been lost in that is that playing well and quickly is a skill in itself, and it’s a skill the game should be trying to reward. There are already timing rules in the books, but players are virtually never penalized despite the obvious violations.
Something’s going to have to change at some point, and it’s nice that even the network least willing to risk upsetting the status quo has started to point out issues like this.