J.B. Holmes Wins But Is Rightfully Crucified For Taking Forever To Do So
J.B. Holmes won his first Tour event in three years yesterday at the Genesis Open, rallying from four strokes behind leader Justin Thomas. This after recovering from two brain surgeries. Should be time to rejoice, right?
Uh, not so much.
For Holmes was the latest poster child for excruciating slow play. Plumb bobbing three-footers, taking 90-seconds to pull the trigger on other putts caused Twitter to implode against him and the Tour for cowardly not enforcing pace of play rules. Hey it did take the final group 5.5 hours to complete their round and at times two-holes behind the group in front.
Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/ZUrqTMb6M3
— George Savaricas (@GeorgeSavaricas) February 17, 2019
Even the overly polite CBS announcer Jim Nantz felt compelled to pile on.
“Here is J.B. Holmes, going through all the maps and scales and typography data that he can find,” said Jim Nantz, setting the stage.
“The issue I have with that is not that he’s doing that, it’s that he had plenty of time to do that while Justin was getting ready for his shot or Adam was getting ready for his shot,” said on-course reporter Peter Kostis. “And he waited until it was his turn to play to go through his whole routine.”
Amen.
Slow play in golf is disrespectful & unfair to the rest of the field … there’s got to be a better way to monitor & enforce these situations
— Zac Blair (@z_blair) February 17, 2019
Ironically, Adam Scott was paired with Holmes and Justin Thomas. Scott had offered himself up as a martyr to take a slow penalty so the Tour could realize this has to happen.
“I mean, I’ll tell you my thing on slow play is it’s never going to change. I think, just get over it,” he said. “Until television and sponsors say, ‘No more money,’ slow play ain’t going to change.”
Holmes attempted to defend his slow mo pace.
“Well, you play in 25 mph gusty winds and see how fast you play when you’re playing for the kind of money and points and everything that we’re playing for,” Holmes said.
“You can’t just get up there and whack it when it’s blowing that hard.
“Yeah, when I first got out here I was really slow. But I’ve sped up quite a bit.
“I’ve gotten better. There’s times when I’m probably too slow, but it is what it is. I was never on the clock. Never even got a warning. TV wants everything to be real fast all the time.”
Uh huh…
Of course, this isn’t the first time J.B. has been cited for snail play. Remember last year’s controversy at the Farmers Insurance Open?
Anyway, until the Tour grows a couple, you can forget lighting a fire under the game’s worst sloths. Not sure why Ponte Vedra suits are dragging their arses, but at some point they’re gonna have to.
Aren’t they??
