Mike Lorenzo-Vera furious as golfing slow play debate rumbles on
Over five and a half hours to complete 18 holes.. You would be annoyed as well, right?
Mike Lorenzo-Vera is the latest professional to weigh in on the slow play debate in golf.
The Frenchman is playing at the ISPS Handa World Invitational in Northern Ireland this week.
He was livid with how long his second round had taken him on Friday…
Lorenzo-Vera is the latest in a line of players to make comments about slow play.
It came back into the public eye with Brooks Koepka’s comments at the Masters Tournament in April.
“Honestly, I would start stroking guys. If you are going to take that long, you have to get stroked,” the five-time major champion said afterwards.
Richard Bland then became the first player in LIV Golf history to be penalised for slow play. That was followed by Carlota Ciganda’s disqualification at the Evian Championship.
The Spaniard refused to accept the penalty awarded to her, and therefore signed her card with the wrong score, leading to her disqualification from the tournament.
Ciganda took to her personal Instagram account afterwards to make comment.
“Very poor performance from the LPGA rules official, they don’t understand what professional golf is about, they only look at their stopwatch like if 20 seconds is going to make a difference.”
Ahead of the AIG Women’s Open, Nelly Korda also passed comment on the situation, looking at it from a different perspective.
“If I was a spectator and I was out here for 5 1/2 hours to 6 hours, you know, it’s tough to watch,” Korda said.
“You want to watch a sport that’s continuously moving and not continuously stalling. I would say I think it’s really important for the rules officials to enforce the Rules of Golf.”
Is Mike Lorenzo-Vera right to be angry about the slow play saga? What are your thoughts on it all? Let us know with a Tweet!
Matt Coles
Mention a European country, and Matt will tell you which resorts make the National Club Golfer Top 100s: European Resorts list. He might even throw in who designed the golf course and how many rooms the hotel has got at each one…
Matt got into the game of golf from a young age, following his old man to the local golf club. He fell for the sport, and now can’t seem to go a day without thinking about how to improve his game (Thanks Dad!). Matt has been a member of Howley Hall GC in Leeds since 2020, and is just about managing to maintain a single-figure handicap. He likes to remind people that he once broke 75, but won’t tell people that it was on a shortened course during the winter.
He moved to Leeds after graduating from the University of Central Lancashire with a First Class Honours degree in Sports Journalism. Matt joined NCG after almost five years travelling the world with the Professional Squash Association, working on events in all four corners of the globe.
Matt currently plays a Cobra King LTDx driver and RadSpeed 3-wood. TaylorMade monopolise the rest of his bag, with a SIM UDI, M5 irons and both Milled Grind and HI-TOE wedges, along with a Monza Redline putter. He uses a Vice Pro Plus golf ball, because he’s a bit different…
Away from golf, Matt is a Manchester United fan, and a keen runner, having ran the Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon (his first and possibly last), in May 2023.
