This bubbling back and forth between professional golfers and the game’s rulesmakers has been a bad look all around.
It’s time to clean it up and move on, which is what PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s memo to players on Monday was intended to do.
Monahan reminded players of several things:
- The tour was actively involved in making the new rules and almost all of its recommendations were adopted;
- It is a collaborative effort with the USGA and the R&A and will continue to be;
- The tour will continue to play by the new rules through this year while analyzing their effect, citing that the process has not yet reached its finish line.
Tour players have continued to challenge the new rules, whether in the course of play or on social media, which has become the bathroom wall of discourse these days.
It’s no secret the tour players have an inherent dislike and distrust of the USGA and, perhaps to a lesser degree, the R&A. But the players are coming across as petulant in their reaction to the rules changes.
They’re barking that they should have input in the rulesmaking process, dismissing the fact the tour was directly involved in the seven-year process of modernizing the rules. The players were involved but it sounds like from 35,000 feet in their private jets.
That was the point Monahan made in his memo. He basically told the players to pipe down.
Are the new rules perfect?
Apparently not given the grease fire that’s erupted over the simple act of dropping a golf ball. The knee-high drop is an awkward idea hatched from good intentions but it needs to change, allowing players to drop from shoulder height to knee height. Simple, clean and it quiets the crowd.
There was a USGA rules official on site the first five weeks of the PGA Tour season explaining the changes but the fire continues to burn. When the USGA’s PR department tweeted a sharp response back at Justin Thomas last week, the whole thing began to look and feel tacky.
Personally, I’d get rid of the new flagstick rule, immediately going back to taking it out when players are on the green. When Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A, said it was never intended to be used as an advantage for players, that suggests he’s not thrilled at how it’s going so far in that particular case.
USGA boss Mike Davis has said more than once he thinks the transition has been “a huge success” but it doesn’t look or feel that way.
Maybe this was inevitable. Consider all the time and brain power Apple puts into the newest iteration of its phones and then the subsequent updates required to iron out unforeseen kinks. It happens with change.
There was a USGA rules official on site the first five weeks of the PGA Tour season explaining the changes but the fire continues to burn. When the USGA’s PR department tweeted a sharp response back at Justin Thomas last week, the whole thing began to look and feel tacky.
All of this has restoked conversation about whether the PGA Tour should establish its own rules. In a sport that has fought against bifurcation for years, it could potentially alter the landscape in a drastic way. As if the pro game weren’t already different enough from what everyone else plays, different rules would make it official.
What would tour rules look like? If they don’t start with serious pace-of-play penalties, they will have fallen short immediately.
Players would want detailed greens books returned to their back pockets. They might agree to using rangefinders but there’s little indication that would hasten the pace of play.
In our short-attention-span world where waiting two seconds for something to load on our computers or phones seems like an eternity, there is a value in being patient. The governing bodies didn’t arrive at these new rules overnight and, if they’re inclined to adjust them, it’s not likely to happen quickly, though it should.
This has become a sideshow and it’s detracting from the bigger show. With the Players Championship one week away, Monahan wants the focus to be on the tour’s biggest event, not the rules. That would be a refreshing change.
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING…
• Vijay Singh has had an extraordinary career and had he become the oldest winner in PGA Tour history last Sunday at the Honda Classic, it would have been one more exceptional achievement in a career filled with them.
But there’s a missing element in Singh’s story – the adoration that should have come with winning 34 PGA Tour events in a Hall of Fame career.
He effectively shut off the media years ago, distrustful of a group that mentioned his cheating charge from decades earlier, and it impacted the public’s perception of him. Because he let almost no one in, Singh became difficult to know. He became an achiever more than a star. Those close to Singh, particularly fellow professionals, talk about his willingness to help them and the camaraderie they feel with him.
It’s a side the public never got to see, getting just the golfer, not the person.
• Jordan Spieth has taken a couple of weeks off in advance of the Players Championship, knowing he needs to begin seeing more encouraging results in his game.
While Spieth has publicly maintained a positive attitude about the adjustments he’s making, the numbers are jarring:
- 180th in FedEx Cup points;
- 199th in strokes gained off the tee;
- 219th in driving accuracy;
- 194th in third-round putting;
- 183rd in fourth-round putting;
- 207th from 4 and 5 feet.
Spieth has always seemed to play more by feel than by pure technique but it’s clear he doesn’t fully trust what he’s doing at the moment. He’s a player, though, who can go all in once things fall into place.