What slow play? Pieters takes a leaf out of Kipchoge’s record book
It was the weekend of breaking the two-hour barrier. A day after Eliud Kipchoge made history by becoming the first person to run a marathon inside 120 minutes, Thomas Pieters decided he fancied a slice of the action.
The Belgian, propping up the Italian Open leaderboard on Sunday morning, saw the opportunity in going out alone in the opening tee time of the final day.
And just like the Kenyan runner, Pieters completed his final round in one hour and 59 minutes.
A round of level-par in less than 2 hours.
Thomas Pieters is doing golf right. https://t.co/gYkVq4eI6E
— NCG (@NCG_com) October 13, 2019
Isn’t it nice to be talking about golfers getting round quickly?
And also, a special mention for the scorer…
Looks like we can’t underestimate the role this committed scorer played in Thomas Pieters’ 2-hour round. pic.twitter.com/Gi9NwaIQ9q
— NCG (@NCG_com) October 13, 2019
A recurring argument for longer rounds being justifiable is centred around players needing to go through lengthy routines to get the best possible result out of each shot.
But Pieters recorded a round of level-par, his joint lowest round of the week, and he’s not the only one to have scored pretty well while playing quickly.
Kevin Na – yes, really – also broke the two-hour boundary in 2016 shooting level-par at East Lake, while Wesley Bryan went even lower by shooting 69 in less than an hour and a half at the BMW Championship in 2017.
This is all evidence that players don’t need to take an age to score well, let’s take a leaf out of Pieters’ book and get on with it.
It will save us all a lot of time and effort in the battle against slow play.
Joe Hughes
Tour editor covering men's golf, women's golf and anything else that involves the word golf, really. The talk is far better than the game, but the work has begun to change that.
