Thursday, November 22, 2007 Chiongbian: Analyzing slow play By Edgar R. Chiongbian Teetime
HAPPY Thanksgiving everyone! I know that this is an American tradition but we practically follow their calendar anyway and you must have something to thank about so “just do it”. Forego the turkey dinner and go for the chicken adobo, the next best thing, and invite people.
After upping the ante, the Asian Tour has attracted the top European and US PGA players. Starting with the Barclays Singapore Open through the UBS Hongkong Open, the tally is: Euro 2, USA one and Asia zero.
The Asian Tour is starting to look like International vs. USA, with Asians trying hard to get in. This may be lost revenue for the Asians but it sure has given us great tournaments to watch and given due respect to the Asian Tour. The best thing for us is we get to enjoy big golf tournaments after the PGA Tour has ended their year.
This might not sound like news to you but it sure is news for a lot of people.
During a tournament, our super-senior golfer Ben Ebrada played in the flight of David Lu’s rat pack, who are considered the fastest players in CCC. I talked to the 81-year-old Ben after the game and he said that these guys were not really that fast; he just got slowed down because he had to walk from the cart path to the ball (cart-path-only day) and they walked faster than him.
This somehow puts a wedge about my recent column when one flight in last month’s tournament held back five flights with four holes open in front of them. Boy Barcelo, who is a year older than Ebrada and owns the four V’s; vim, vigor, vitality and v… said that the incident should be reviewed and analyzed to find out why it happened. He said that by doing this, we can benefit from the results.
I thought about it and wondered how exactly did Boy Barcelo figure that something was amiss other than the obvious slow play. And then a light lit in my head that yes there is a good reason and the fault is not on the players but in the system.
Without benefit of research, I would say that a flight of foursomes is widely used because it maximizes the combination of time and the string of available flights, which are based on the speed of play between players of different levels of handicaps. The practice of allowing only a maximum of foursome is used everywhere except in the Philippines, where five-some is allowed.
When you have five players with handicaps around 30 that will give you an approximate total of 150 extra strokes that is allowed in this flight. When you have a flight with an average of 12 handicaps, this gives you a total of 60 allowable strokes. That is less than half the high total and so this is where the problem lies and not necessarily the fault of the players.
This should be reviewed by the golf committees and they should make a ruling as to the maximum number of players allowed in a flight based on their handicaps. Thus, some flights with high handicaps cannot be allowed to play as five-some and may even go down as a three-some. And to apply this only during tournaments and enforce the existing rule of letting other flights pass when there is an open hole ahead on regular golfing days.
Congrats to the CCC monthly medal winners last Saturday. Mark Dy won lowest gross with a 71. Class A was won by Raymond Garcia, with George Hong as runnerup. Class B champion Manabu Ichikawa had the lowest net of 64, with Patrick Go with net 66. Class C champion was Willy Suarez and Juanito Uy was runnerup. Class D champion was Faustino Froilan and Serge Romero as runnerup. Seniors champion was Albert Cang with Manning Granada as runnerup. Guest winners were Shau Min Lo and Gassy Lizares.
