Instead of the conversation coming down the stretch Sunday at the Farmers Insurance Open being about the battle at the top, once again it focused on the glacial pace of play we have grown accustomed to on the PGA Tour. This time, it was J.B. Holmes who was the culprit.
Holmes, who needed an eagle on the 18th hole to force a playoff, stood over his second shot in the fairway for four minutes and 10 seconds before finally deciding to lay up, thus taking him out of contention for a playoff.
FOUR MINUTES AND 10 SECONDS (the video, in its entirety, is above).
As you can see, Golf Twitter was not very kind to Holmes after:
Asked JB Holmes if he regretted taking so much time to play his second shot on 18, while icing Alex Noren: “No, I was still trying to win. So that’s part of it.”
— Ryan Lavner (@RyanLavnerGC) January 29, 2018
And then he proceeded to lay up https://t.co/qNr9nX9oQN
— Dan Hauser (@DanHauserGolf) January 29, 2018
Nobilo says 4 minutes and 10 seconds for JB to hit his shot on 18.
FOUR MINUTES AND TEN SECONDS
— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) January 29, 2018
J.B. Holmes tried to ice the kicker, only to have Alex Noren sail one wide right of the uprights.
— Jason Sobel (@JasonSobelESPN) January 28, 2018
Even the Golf Channel got it on it, putting up this graphic on their Monday edition of Morning Drive:
This graphic is fantastic pic.twitter.com/iahCOOEgD2
— Dan Hauser (@DanHauserGolf) January 29, 2018
While it is absolutely absurd for a player to take over four minutes to hit one shot, and incredibly annoying for fans to watch, as Michael Shamburger of The Big Lead pointed out in his colum Monday, as long as the Tour doesn’t police it, the players will continue to do it:
Of course, that would require the PGA Tour actually stepping in and doing something about it and as Geoff Shackelford points out over at Golfweek, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan does not see slow play as major issue. Meanwhile, his counterparts over on the European Tour are introducing rules to combat the issue.
If you could take as much time as you wanted every day to complete your tasks at work with 0 reprocussions would you? I’m sure we all would, and there in lies the problem. As easy as it is for us to pull out the pitchforks and blame him, we can’t blame J.B. Holmes for it because he was just playing within the rules, at least how they are enforced. This is all on the PGA Tour, and will continue to be untill either they institue a shot clock type system, or start enforcing their pace of play rules.
