WINDERMERE, Fla. – College coaches are no strangers to slow play, so much so that Washington coach Matt Thurmond launched the “Under Four” campaign at the school’s Golf Husky Invitational last month to combat the game’s growing pace-of-play problems.
The goal was for the 75-man field to play rounds in under four hours and it worked, to a degree, with the average round coming in at 4:15.
On Monday at the annual Isleworth Collegiate Invitational University of Georgia coach Chris Haack was pleased to hear of Thurmond’s success, but not optimistic it would catch on anytime soon.
“I think there will need to be some radical changes made (to speed up play),” Haack said. “Part of the problem is that golf courses are a lot longer than they used to be. You could zip around in under four hours, but a combination of fast greens and long golf courses . . . I don’t know if it’s realistic to play under four now.”
