Ben Coley golf column on slow play penalties

The European Tour is inferior to the PGA Tour in many ways. Most are the consequence of geography, finance, and other matters largely beyond its control. Quality of player is one; purse size, a by-product of field strength, is another. But in the battle to combat slow play, the European Tour are at least trying. The same cannot be said of their cross-Atlantic counterparts.

Led by John Paramor, chief rules official, there has been a concerted effort to clamp down on slow play in Europe, one intensified since the appointment of the dynamic Keith Pelley as chief executive. But they need help.

On Thursday, the PGA Tour issued their first slow-play penalty in 22 years. Two United States presidents did two terms each without seeing a player penalised for taking too long.

Now, the run is over after Brian Campbell and Miguel Angel Carballo, playing team golf in New Orleans, each earned a bad time which, when combined, made for a one-stroke penalty. Had they been playing individually, neither man would have been penalised. Absent from the ruling was any sense of timing or application of logic, but to the PGA Tour it represents tangible proof that they too are concerned that golf takes too long. All other evidence suggests that they are not.

If you are a casual golf fan, chances are you may never have seen Campbell or Carballo swing a club. The latter is a 38-year-old with two Web.com Tour wins, the latest of which came six years ago. Campbell is 24, promising enough, but still best known for finishing 27th as an amateur in the US Open of two summers past. Penalising them was an empty gesture, which will have no effect whatsoever on slow play. 

You have seen Jason Day swing a club, and you have seen him take an age to do it.

Earlier this year, Day told reporters in Hawaii that slow play does not concern him at all. "I don't care so much about speeding up my game," said the world's top-ranked player. "I've got to get back to what makes me good. If that means I have to back off five times, I'm going to back off five times before I have to actually hit the shot."

Day made himself an easy target and continues to do so. That is, if your idea of an easy target is one who consistently flouts the rules. Unfortunately, officials see easy targets as unknown golfers, away from the spotlight and without the following to kick up a fuss; too far from winning for their penalty to have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the event. Tokenism, to use just one word.

In 2013, before his ascent to number one, Day was leading the Masters, taking all of the allotted time and sometimes more to go through his routine before finally consenting to strike his ball. But Day - young yet experienced and a high-profile contender - went unpenalised as a relative unknown named Guan Tianlang was instead singled out.

Guan had qualified for the Masters thanks to his astonishing victory in the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship - astonishing because he was still a child and from a country, China, whose ruling party had issued a ban on golf. When teeing off at Augusta, he was closer to his 14th birthday than his 15th and would go on to become the youngest player ever to make the cut in a major - even after the penalty.

There was no doubt that Guan was slow, but this was a mid-teen playing alongside adults at golf's most famous venue. The wind was swirling, more so than it usually does at Augusta National, and it is likely Guan had never putted on greens so severe in both speed and slope.

He was hitting three-woods into holes that even his playing partners - veteran Ben Crenshaw and short-hitting Matteo Manassero - could attack with mid-irons, and all the time dazzled by the glare of the Chinese media. To break 80 in all four rounds and finish 58th was a sensational achievement. Had he done so unpunished, nobody would have been any wiser. His round was not broadly televised; his playing partners raised no complaints.

But officials – this time a coalition led by Paramor, whose name has become synonymous with slow-play - saw an opportunity. The clock said Guan was slow, he had been warned, and the case was closed.

The indignation that followed centred on the absence of logic and the ignorance of evidence given by Crenshaw and Manassero. That Guan was performing at the absolute limit of his capabilities in such unfamiliar surroundings was not considered a factor, which would be fine but for the allowances made to other, more familiar players every week of the year, largely by the PGA Tour.

One place behind Guan, in 59th, was Kevin Na, a habitually slow player who, at the previous year's PLAYERS Championship, had spent much of the weekend in a position he found uncomfortable: in the lead and on the clock.

Na - on television, firmly in the reckoning, high enough in profile - escaped punishment, despite on one occasion taking well over a minute to tee-off when, as the first player in the group to do so, the rules state he should have a maximum of 40 seconds. 

In failing to penalise Na, the PGA Tour did what they have done many times over the last 20 years: hung Paramor and his deputies out to dry. Known for being firm but fair and not to be crossed, Paramor is respected across the European Tour, but the penalties he has dished out appear unfair, because nobody else is prepared to join him. Operating on a mandate made in Europe, too often he has been left isolated in America, such as when incurring the wrath of Tiger Woods for daring to put him and Padraig Harrington on the clock at the 2009 Bridgestone. 

Two months after the PLAYERS in which Na had come under the spotlight of everyone bar the officials present, Paramor hit Hideki Matsuyama with a one-shot penalty in the third round of the Open. The Japanese sensation was attempting to stay in the mix on his debut in the event, playing a style of golf he had seldom been exposed to.

The parallels with Guan are obvious. Matsuyama was young and inexperienced, playing in the event for the first time and informed of the situation through an interpreter, another small factor in softening the target for a slow-play bullet. 

Johnson Wagner, playing alongside Matsuyama, was visibly furious as he left the course and had barely calmed down by the time he met the media. An experienced PGA Tour professional and one of the fastest on the circuit, Wagner was in a good position to help adjudicate, but his comments were ignored.

"I understand, I'm a fast player. I don't like slow play, either," he said. "But given his position in the tournament, and given the shot he faced on 17, laying it up out of the fescue over gorse and pot bunkers, I don't think he took too long.

"I think he executed a really good shot and under the situation, I think it's tragic, and I think the R&A should use better judgement in the penalising of it."

"I pleaded in the scoring area for five minutes," added Wagner, who had played with Matsuyama at the Masters earlier in the year and been taken with both the man and the game.

"I feel like I let the official know how I felt about it as gentlemanly as I could, but it infuriated me that he got a penalty.

"I tried to represent Hideki as good as I could, and couldn't get it changed."

Again, Paramor and his colleagues found themselves weathering the ensuing storm alone: Wagner’s fury was directed at them for misapplication of the rules, rather than at the PGA Tour for refusing to acknowledge the existence of an issue, the result of which is that penalties are more controversial than slow play itself.

None of which is to say that the decisions taken by Paramor and his team make absolute sense. This is the same set of officials who, four years prior to Matsuyama’s penalty, refused to take action against Ross Fisher on Friday at Turnberry, as he launched what would become a serious challenge for the Claret Jug.

Fisher was one of the world's form golfers and one of the most serious British challengers, 10 years on from Paul Lawrie's Carnoustie win. He had been eighth in the US Open and now appeared one of the players to beat here, in the shadows of the Ailsa Craig, as he put the finishing touches to a second-round 68 to complement an opening 69 while favourite Tiger Woods missed the cut.

His score should've been at least one higher, because he should've been issued at least one penalty. Having been put on the clock, Fisher broke the time limit seven times subsequently. Paramor decided that in each of these seven instances, Fisher was close enough to the limit to be afforded the benefit of some considerable doubt.

Why Matsuyama, why not Fisher? Why Guan, why not Na? Why Campbell and Carballo, not, perhaps, Crane and Martin?

Because officials – even those, like Paramor, trying their best without the required support - want the best of both worlds; to acknowledge what we all know - that slow play is a massive problem in professional golf - and to be seen to be acting, without having to truly act.

Knowingly or otherwise, the absence of regular slow-play penalties for higher-profile players is the product of bias - bias towards those capable of fighting a battle, those who wield the most power in professional golf; bias against those who can't and don't.

Paramor knowingly allowed Fisher a little extra room, for reasons only he will understand. Perhaps he always allows it, regardless of the player involved. But the rules state that Fisher should've been penalised, as he was three years later when producing two bad times in the Celtic Manor Wales Open, again under the watchful eye of Paramor.

Fisher took longer in Wales than he did in Turnberry, but on both occasions broke the barrier which is in place for a reason: to provide clarity and to remove doubt. Golf has enough variables to do without the interpretation and generosity of its officials. Start the clock, stop the clock, apply the rules.

In other words, go ahead and penalise Matsuyama, Guan, Campbell and Carballo, if that is what the clock forces you to do. However, once you make allowances like those given to Fisher, like the ones given regularly to Day, and to what feels like the majority of big-name players on the LPGA Tour, there can be no fair penalty.

As such, the battle against slow play requires cooperation across Tours, which right now is conspicuous by its absence. As a result, Paramor’s penalties appear unfair; lost is the fact that he’s at least willing to act.

The PGA Tour in particular want us all to believe that fighting slow play is their focus, but their actions demonstrate that their greatest concern remains the product, which is built solely by players like Day and like Jordan Spieth.

Spieth has been on the clock in two majors, one European Tour event and even the Ryder Cup, but never on the PGA Tour. Perhaps nothing better highlights the problems faced by Paramor and chief assistant Andy McPhee.

These European Tour officials might have been wrong with Guan, but the evidence suggests that they are making a concerted effort. Yet in the same way that a penalty to Carballo means nothing until there is a penalty given to Day, the European Tour can only do so much without the help of their colleagues in America.

On Thursday, those colleagues demonstrated that their chief concern when it comes to slow play is not to upset their prize assets. Until that attitude changes, Paramor is fighting a battle he can only lose.