snowaggie said:
O.K....I'll take his side. If that's the pace at which he plays the best, and there are no repercussions from officials, he'd be dumb to play faster.
I don't have the data, but I heard on a podcast (I think it was Inside the Ropes) that players perform better after they've been put on the clock. Like I said, I don't have the info in front of me, but would be interesting to see a correlation of time taken to hit a shot vs performance.
Personally I think at least part of the answer is to time everyone and make it public. From the time it's your turn until the time you execute a shot, how long does it take? Everybody loves stats. If they can come up with Strokes Gained then certainly they can make a relevant metric for how slow someone is. It'd shame these guys and would also give you the tools you need to come up with real rules about how long you should have to take a shot.
I think professional billiards has a good system you could use as a model. Standard shot clock and a certain number of extensions to account for shots that require extra attention. If you're having to punch out from the trees and decide whether to go high or low and where to miss -- sure take a little more time. The problem is crap like taking over two minutes to assess an eight foot putt or a 125 yard shot from the fairway.