The current uproar over long putters and anchors is a diversion.  Just like the ruling on grooves a while back, the broom putter controversy is designed to take your eyeballs away from the real problems currently crippling golf.

The real problems are that toaster oven on a stick that allows golfers to bust it long and straight without the practice that skill once required and  . . . the superball . . . and the cost of playing the game.

But the worst enemy of golf right now is the time needed to rack up 18 holes.

Our alphabet rule-givers may not be able to do anything about Sputnik ball and the 460cc abominations, nor is it within their powers to lower the cost of playing the game, but . . . this slow play thing is gonna kill us all.

. . . this slow play thing is gonna kill us all.

It began with that accursed PSR, or Pre-Shot Routine, a mixture of sports psycho-visualization and brain-nerve-muscle repetition cues, and progressed to putt-stalking while staring like Clint Eastwood just before he slaps leather.

During the Ryder Cup, Furyk set up and backed away so many times I had to put in a football mouthpiece to keep from grinding my jaw teeth away.  I know, I know, he’s playing for big money, he’s allowed to move like a glacier and start-stop like a Yugo with a tank of old gas, but that’s not the point here.

The point is, every level of golf has been affected by this slowdown.  People are leaving and going to other pursuits.  My brother, a hard-core +2 player, has almost entirely quit the game!  He took up skydiving and is now thinking about dumping his club membership!

Why?

Because he is tired of waiting behind numbskulls imitating Furyk for 18 holes, stalking, visualizing, backing off, checking alignment again and again and again, adding two minutes to every shot!  Add two minutes to every shot, multiply by four and see how long it takes to play 18 in 2012.

numbskulls imitating Furyk for 18 holes

Just yesterday, I went out to the first tee at a nearby public course and watched a foursome take 18 minutes to get off the tee.  They did not prepare to play until the fairway cleared, they didn’t seem to care about those waiting behind and the youngest of the group, a twenty-something wearing pants so tacky that Ludell wouldn’t even consider them, did a perfect imitation of Jim Furyk’s spastic stop-and-go routine— and then he took a mulligan.

After watching that disgusting display, I knew it was time to release the Rockbottum CC Method for Abolishing Slow Play.  We are currently returning the pace of golf back to where golf was fun.

It’s called The 330 Can.  Give it a try.