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Play Faster
Published: 8/10/2009 5:12 PM
Last Modified: 8/10/2009 5:12 PM

Former Tulsa World sports writer Charlie Smith was famous for going to college baseball games and yelling "play faster" from the press box.
If you have ever attended a four-hour college baseball game, you understand why.
The subject of playing faster became a PGA Tour issue in Sunday's final round of the Bridgestone Invitational.
Padraig Harrington and Tiger Woods were placed on double-secret probation for slow play and, therefore, were put "on the clock" by a rules official before the 16th hole.
Harrington didn't handle the shot clock very well and fell out of first place when he triple-bogeyed No. 16.
Woods won the tournament. Afterward, Woods said he wished that the rules official hadn't gotten in the way of a great battle.
But was Woods being honest or polite?
In 2008, Woods wrote this in a newsletter:
"I would like to talk about slow play. It's been an ongoing problem on the PGA Tour for a long time. I honestly believe the pace of play is faster in Europe and Japan. It has been suggested offenders be penalized with strokes. The problem is, you may get one guy that slows down a group for playing at a snail's pace and gets them all put on the clock, which isn't fair. I know this is a complicated issue. Hopefully, it can be addressed in the near future."
The last player to be penalized for slow play was Dillard Pruitt at the 1982 Byron Nelson. How about this: Pruitt later became the guy with the stopwatch and went to work for the PGA Tour as a rules official.
After retiring from the sportswriting business, Smith became a marshall at South Lakes Golf Course. He found another job where he gets to yell "play faster."


Reader Comments 1 Total
Justabill1 (4 years ago)
I don't remember the hole number but Harrington missed about a 4 or 5 footer and left about a foot long putt. Instead of putting out he had to line up the putt from both sides of the ball. A 6 year old could have tapped it in.
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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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