While We Were Sleeping Files: 76 World Class Players Took A Really Long Time To Play Golf Saturday

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Reduced field sizes are always declared the only cure for PGA Tour slow play, which, according to Daniel Hicks of APF, hit a new low for Saturday's third round of the WGC-HSBC Champions when the 76-player field featuring a sizeable portion of the world top 100 golfers, took 5 1/2 hours to play.

There were complicating factors: high, wet rough, split tee threesomes and reachable fours and fives for everyone because the ball goes too far. Still, just 76 players. 76! And they aren't looking for lost balls.

The leader at the time, Graeme McDowell, called the situation "ridiculous."

"We've got threeballs, a lot of people out there and a couple of driveable par fours and a couple of two-shot par fives. Just a slow golf course. A long day," said McDowell, the 2010 US Open champion.

Ryder Cup star Poulter was less diplomatic in his assessment of the day after a level-par 72 left him four behind McDowell.

"There's no excuses. We need to be pressing and making sure people are keeping up to pace," Poulter told AFP.

"Five and a half hours is too long to play golf. End of story."

Bubba Watson suggested what he always does: penalizing players. Silly him!

"You have to penalise people," he told reporters after the first three rounds at the Phoenix Open earlier this year took well in excess of five hours.

"Give them a stroke (penalty). It could cause you to win or lose. I think strokes is the only way to do it."

Neither McDowell or Poulter took to Twitter to gripe, perhaps knowing they'd be fined for pointing out the obvious.

Opportunities! PGA Tour Trying To Help Its Starving Millennials

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Debatable is the pure genius it took to commit golf to an exhausting, annoying, neverending wraparound schedule at the expense of the common sense that says every entertainment product needs to go away for a bit. Not debatable was the new calendar year's schedule's discrimination against younger players and the PGA Tour's ever-expanding list of medical exemptions clogging fields each week.

But as Rex Hoggard reports, the PGA Tour has listened to their critics and is working hard to expand fall fields and lessen the role of the medicallty exempt. This doesn't solve the problem of pro golf as a year-round enterprise that annoys in its persistence (especially compared to other sports), but it's at least a righting of the inequity that has arisen for up-and-coming players.

All told, the Tour has added up to 180 new playing opportunities next fall and the circuit’s moves have already started paying off. Last week in Las Vegas 13 more players from the Web.com Tour category received a spot in the field compared to last season and this week at Sea Island 25 more are on the tee sheet.

“We’re looking at everything to get more Web.com Tour guys into tournaments top to bottom,” Finchem said.

“We are doing some things and will watch it for a year or maybe two and see where it comes out.”

The Tour also plans to adjust the major medical exemption category to increase access for the Web.com Tour graduates. Beginning with the 2014-15 season, medical exemptions will be capped at three seasons unless there are “extreme circumstances” which should, over time, reduce a category that has grown to 14 players this season.