lol – pretty funny – but playing by yourself is NOT a good thing in a tournament. It means you have managed to NOT play very much good golf and you just want to get on and off the course as fast as possible. Some of these guys who have to play by themselves get around in a little more than 2 hours since they have nobody holding them up.

Tournaments DO offer these rabbits a marker to play with, but more often than not, they just play alone.

I wouldn’t read too much into O’Hair rocketing around Hazeltine by himself.

This reminds me of a time when Darren Clarke and a playing partner were in the first group in the final round at a TOUR stop about three years ago and Clarke and his partner made an agreement to play as fast as possible and finished a round in about two and a half hours. Its easy to play fast when you don’t have much to play for.

I think the bigger question about slow play is why are we seeing a lot of players, especially younger ones, playing slow. I think an easy answer is that young players have seen other tour pros on television take their time over putts and shots and it has become ingrained in their minds that that is how they have to play. I remember reading that Arnold Palmer was mortified when he watched a junior tournament years back because of the amount of time the players were taking over simple putts.