Europro tour tackling slow play with education and support.

Saw this article on the Europro website and thought I would share it. It sounds positive to me. It was refreshing to see a couple of players (Snedeker for one) playing at a cracking pace at the Masters.

It's a shame it happened to the youngest player ever to play the Masters and that he is an amateur, but it was also good to see the officials taking slow play seriously (even if he is only used as an example to the others). More consistent penalties should speed things up considerably, in my opinion.

In my own play, I try to be ready to start my shot routine when it is my turn to play (having already decided on the distance, shot style/shape and club to be used), walk quickly from shot to shot and generally go with my first instinct on putts after assessing the green on the way to the green and my ball. I can imagine that my putting routine might change a bit especially on courses I haven't played much, but at the moment it seems to be working with my putting sitting as the better part of my game at the moment. Calling groups through when searching for balls also significantly helps to speed up play overall. It also helps with club morale/camaraderie.

My handicap ended up being reduced by 2.1 to 17.6 so I am currently playing off 18.
We had a medal (stroke play) on Saturday in which I carded a 12 on the difficult dogleg left 9th hole. I sliced my drive with the assistance of a head/cross wind which shot it WAAAY out of bounds right so I reloaded and hit my safe shot with my hybrid exactly 'where I wanted'. I walked to where it should have been and found that the wind was lots stronger than I reckoned and my ball didn't clear the left OB by about a yard/metre. I then ran back up the steep hill to play my fifth shot with an 8 iron which I pull-hooked OB and finally hit a nice 8 to end up with 12 at the hole. I was quite angry at myself after all those shenanigans and managed to compose myself quite well for the rest of the round finishing with a 24-over score of 93. If it was stableford, it would have been worth 35 points.

It was great to be playing from the grass teeing areas rather than the winter mats and I'm looking forward to a fun-filled summer of golf.