It was a few years ago when Mark Calcavecchia offered his definitive plan for the slow-play dilemma.
"Put me off first, every round," Calcavecchia said.
Of course, Calcavecchia knew that was a solution for him, not the PGA Tour. But he also knew that given the way the PGA Tour is constituted, it is a joke to suggest that you can police this pace-of-play business.
"Seems to me we were talking about this when I came on Tour," he said. "Twenty years later we're still talking about it."
Not in a favorable light, either. At least not after Sunday's Bridgestone Invitational ended in a blanket of nonsense that never should have generated controversy.
You could argue that Woods owes John Paramor an apology for insisting that the respected rules official ruined a terrific head-to-head battle with Harrington because nothing could have been further from the truth. Paramor was merely doing what the PGA Tour brotherhood asks him to — uphold the thankless task of monitoring some of the slowest-moving athletes this side of racing turtles.
Who owns the PGA Tour? The members. Virtually everything is in place as they want, including a pace-of-play mandate, which is why PGA Tour rules officials are frustrated.
"How many millions of times have they bitched about slow play? Then when we enforce it they complain," a veteran rules official said. "You tell me how we can win?"
They can't, of course, especially when there are those who subscribe to a philosophy that rules are rules — except, of course, when said rules touch a scintillating competition between two marquee names in the final group. Then, it seems to be suggested that officials use discretionary interpretations.
That's a tough corner in which to put a rules official.
No one seems to dispute the bottom line to Sunday's controversy — Woods and Harrington were seriously lagging behind the group ahead of them, 18 minutes by some accounts. Frankly, the fact that they were warned, then put on the clock should have elicited a big yawn.
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Happens all the time, folks, and here's the reality: When you talk about rules that are truly invisible, the PGA Tour's pace-of-play ranks right up there with traveling in the NBA. I mean, it's there, but only for window dressing.
Remember, members write the guidelines and this is pretty much how they want slow play addressed: "When we fall behind, gently remind us, gently remind us if we're still behind in a hole or two, then if we're still behind you can put us on the clock." That is accompanied, of course, with a wink, because not since the days of the feathery has anyone been penalized a stroke for slow play.
OK, only kidding, because the last penalty was issued in 1982, but you get the point — we're talking the bite of a three-day-old puppy.
And you know who knows that better than anyone: Harrington. In possession of more dignity than anyone in the game, the Irishman is also notoriously methodical, shall we say, and most certainly has been placed on the clock plenty.
Never has he incurred a penalty, however, so if he rushed his drive, his second shot, his third, or even his fourth on that par-5 16th where a one-stroke lead melted into a three-stroke deficit, well, shame on him for losing his famed mental grip and falling out of his rhythm.
He said as much, too.
"I reacted poorly to the situation and that's my own fault," Harrington said.
Good for him, because to blame Paramor for enforcing rules that are put forth by players is to reinforce the belief that the PGA Tour membership wants to enforce slow play like it wants higher taxes. Players talk up edicts to curb slow play because it allows the crowd back in Ponte Vedra Beach to tell CBS and NBC leadership that it is addressing the issue.
(We all agree, right, that PGA Tour tournaments are first and foremost a TV show? That is why rules officials are told to hurry-along players, so that the golf doesn't cut into "My Favorite Martian," or whatever is on at 6 p.m.)
Of course, they are not truly addressing the pace-of-play issue and won't be until they explore the successful "checkpoint system" that is in place at U.S. Golf Association amateur events like the girls' junior, junior boys, men's and women's public links.
