Golfpocalypse is a weekly collection of words about (mostly) professional golf with very little in the way of a point, and the Surgeon General says it will make you a worse person. Reach out to The Golfpocalypse with your questions or comments on absolutely anything at shane.spr8@gmail.com.
I absolutely love most of the marshals at my home course here in Durham—they're very nice people, it's always pleasant to see them on the first tee, and one of them has even become a good friend. And yet, deep down, I wonder if they're too nice for the main function of the job, which is to bring hellfire and brimstone to slow players, the scourge of American golf. "Should we send them all to bootcamp to erase the last vestiges of their humanity?" I catch myself wondering. How else will they handle the miscreants and dawdlers?
Now, look, I don't want to make pace of play complaints my entire personality. I played a recent round that was slow as molasses, but I got in a mental space where I was okay with it, kept my annoyance at bay, and by the time I finished nine holes in two and a half hours without blowing my top, I felt basically like the Buddha. Maybe I could be zen all the time! But I also realize that's not realistic, because some days are just ripe for fury as you stare in the distance at a 40 handicap taking nine practice swings and murdering a squirrel with a shank. Golf is so popular on the recreational front right now, courses are breaking their own revenue records every year, and the slow problem that has always been a scourge on the weekends now seem semi-permanent. I remember heading to my local muni on a random afternoon five years ago when the temperature was a little hot or a little cold for the locals, and having the course basically to myself. COVID-19 ended that; those days are gone, and they're never coming back.
Which means that the only way to make pace of play bearable, beyond forking over country club money to get away from the rabble, is for marshals to get mean. Nice guy marshals are never going to quite be up to the task, because it's inherently hard to ride up to a group of people and say "you need to speed up," much less "if you don't speed up, we'll have to kick you off the course." But that's exactly what we need! We need some real abrasive, intimidating figures to police these courses, and we need the pros and golf directors to invest them with full authority.
Is it wishful thinking to say that no 18-hole round should take more than four hours and 15 minutes? No! It's very doable, but it requires a certain unapologetic toughness to set the tone. You can even tell new players, at the start of rounds, that there's a time standard and that falling behind makes the experience worse for everyone. The real hard work, though, is finding the trouble groups and cracking the whip. And when I say whip, I mean a literal whip—I'm picturing them like the foreman on an old timey chain gang. Maybe they should even ride around on horses, or at least a very fast, intimidating cart that plays "Ride of the Valkyries", Apocalypse Now style.
I love my nice marshals, I truly do. But we need to infuse them with the merciless energy of a cow rustler from the old west, or they need to be replaced with meaner people from the civilian world. They won't be hard to find—literally every time I take a short drive, I encounter a half dozen jerks. Just make these people marshals, let the power go to their heads, and soon it'll be like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld, with everybody playing at the right pace!
And if this sounds dystopian to you—I'll admit it's feeling a bit grim to me as well—just read it again the next you spend five hours on the course. Sooner or later, we'll all become hardliners.
FIVE TOUR THOUGHTS, TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION
Christian Petersen
1. There's something very annoying and/or tiresome about the "Player of the Year" debate every year, probably because it doesn't actually matter, and I will raise my hand as someone who has contributed a hot take or two, and pretty recently. Still, I did legitimately think Xander had nosed ahead after the Open, and I have to tip my cap, just slightly, for how Scottie closed the year at the Olympics and the Tour Championship. This was sort of like when an underdog makes a second half surge in a March Madness game, goes ahead by a point with ten minutes left, gets everyone excited, and then the favorite closes on a 30-5 run and everyone goes, "oh yeah, they're really good."
2. Last week I gave props to Justin Thomas for making the Tour Championship in a year when it seemed like you never heard his name, and now I have to continue the JT love-fest by asking, how is he not on the Presidents Cup team??? The dude is 17-7-4 in his team match play career! Who cares if he had a rough time in Rome, so did everyone! I wrote more about this here, but I remain a little dumbfounded.
3. Speaking of the Presidents Cup, I get the sense that Schauffele and Cantlay are going to add to their legend in a big way in Montreal. Both of these guys seem to be really clicking, and now Xander's got that major swag. I wouldn't be shocked to see a 3-0-1 type showing from them, and if I had to put money on it now, I'd bet they end up as the second greatest pairing in these events ever, after Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal (who are about a million miles ahead of anyone else).
4. In last week's Golfpocalypse, I proposed a different match play format that both makes the season finale more exciting and ideally placates sponsors who don't want to get stuck with a Sunday championship dud, and a week later, it seems more urgent than ever that they need to do something, because the current format just isn't that fun. I'll never turn down a chance to see Scheffler dominate, but they could be doing so much more, and it feels like there's just a deflating lack of ambition here.
5. What an incredible year of "almosts" for Collin Morikawa, right to the bitter end! He almost won the Tour Championship (well, according to him, he kinda did), he almost won a couple majors, almost won some Tour events ... this guy is right there, but 2024 will go down as the year he was knocking on the door for what felt like nine straight months. Having the dubious distinction of being the 72-hole "well, technically" winner of the Tour Championship, while Scheffler wins in the eyes of the world, is so on theme, and a perfect way for his season to end. Book him for at least one major in 2025.
THE ABSOLUTE IRONCLAD LOCKS OF THE WEEK
The Golfpocalypse is not a gambling advice service, and you should never heed anything written here. Better picks are here.
Record through 4 weeks: 2-23. Cash money on Scottie Scheffler! Was it the easiest, cheapest pick of all-time? Sure. But we've got our second win, baby, and came so close to getting two in a single with Attaya Thitikul.
There's no PGA Tour event this week! Thus, I boldly predict that nobody will win.
There is also no LPGA event, so once again I am riding with absolutely nobody. I can already tell this is going to be a great week.
The Omega European Masters is going down on the DP World Tour in beautiful Crans-sur-Sierre, and yes, I have looked at the leaderboard, but no, I'm not going with current leader Matt Wallace, who let me down last week. Instead, I'm taking previously unheralded Nicolai Von Dellingshausen, and if you think it's simply because his 17-letter last name caught my eye, then you, sir, know me too well.
At the Ascension Charity Classic on the senior tour, I'm going to go with Steve Stricker. He's from Wisconsin, not Indiana, but it's a midwest state whose main sports team wears red colors, so maybe he'll get confused and think he's at home. Also, Midwesterners love a good humble aw-shuckser fella like Stricker, so I bet the crowd backs him heavily.
At LIV Golf Sulawesi, I still like Anthony Kim.
THE "DUMB TAKE I KIND OF BELIEVE"
The Presidents Cup is going to be better than the Ryder Cup in about 20 years, and it's primarily (and paradoxically) because the fans are not that into it. Rabid fandom has turned the Ryder Cup into a guaranteed home blowout every two years, and while everyone loves to crap on the Presidents Cup, guess what? They've had two close finishes in the last decade, in Korea and Melbourne, which is two more than we've seen at the Ryder Cup. The tide is changing, folks! And it's only going to keep going in this direction, because based on what I've seen, we're a long way from the fans reaching anything close to Ryder Cup fervor, which means (along with the continued growth of the overseas game) that there's still a chance for very dramatic matches.
THE READER STORY OF THE WEEK
This week I asked for stories of devastating 18th holes, and Benjy did not disappoint with this story that I haven't stopped thinking about since I read it:
Roll into the 18th of my home course needing a par to shoot a 79, my first time sub 80. Drive is fine, finds the fairway maybe a little shorter than I would usually hit.
Playing with one of my best friends, I asked him for a yardage, he says 160. I pull my 160 club and think that seems reasonable to me. Standing over the ball heart pounding through my chest, palms sweaty, "immense" pressure since I know this shot will make or break my sub-80 bid. Hit the purest shot of all time right in line with the flag!
It was a phenomenal 160 yard shot. The issue was that the pin was in the back of the green at about 140 yards. My ball makes it clean through the trees behind the green and ends up next to the pro shop, in jail with no great way to get to the pin. Two chips and two putts later my dreams of shooting in the 70s are dashed.
My friend said it was a totally unintentional bad read and even offered for me to re-hit my 2nd shot but I had played that round entirely legit up to that point and I didn't want to tarnish what I thought was a historical moment in my golf career.
There is absolutely no forgiveness possible for that friend, at least until he breaks 80. You can't give a wrong read on that shot! Still, I do want to give Benjy props for refusing the re-hit...that wouldn't have made anyone feel good.
Previously on Golfpocalypse:
