How long should a round be?

Less is more in our book, 5 hours no go!

What is the correct pace for a round of golf. At PIAIL, we believe that a fourball should only take four hours, start at 9am, off the course by 1pm, a drink or two in the bar, a chat, and then off to other things.

Any more than that and you need to look long and hard in the mirror. And that includes professionals and tour players, alongside the amateurs of a weekend.

How should it be policed, at your club you need to police yourselves, and just not accept it. In the monthly medal, you should have a start and more importantly a finsh time, 10 mins over and shots added to your score [be just like playing off a plus handicap!]. The group behind must finish the same time behind you as the gap in tee times. So if you have 10mins between tee times, you must finish 10 minutes behind the group ahead of you.

That would work on tour too, just penalise shots on first three rounds and prize money if slow on Sunday. Soon get a move on then, am sure Matt Fitzpatrick would agree. And TV channels too, they could be much tighter on their coverage as they ‘should’ be a pretty accurate cut off point for each round.

And it would soon become obvious, both on tour and at your club who the culprits are.

Enjoy… and remember Play. It. As. It. Lies.