Nail the snails with a one-shot penalty

All week on the Masters website they had been asking for ideas on how to grow

the game. Then came a final round at Augusta that made for a pretty good advert for killing it off.

Masters Sunday is traditionally

about determining the last man

standing. This one was more about

the last man awake.

Anyone make it through to the end

of the television broadcast? Didn't

think so. No roars through Amen

Corner this year. Well, not unless you

count the stampede for the exit.

Just when you thought the leading

professionals couldn't get any slower,

they manage to take five hours. For

two balls.

American Brandt Snedeker came

off the course and couldn't stop

crying. I know how he felt. When it

was finally over, I felt like crying with

relief myself.

Deadlines came and went as the

action got ever slower, so apologies

if you weren't able to read that

Trevor Immelman actually won the

thing in your edition yesterday.

I

suppose we should be thankful it

wasn't a play-off or it might not have

made today's paper.

Yes, there were extenuating

circumstances. The course played

tough and the winds were capricious.

It still doesn't alter the bottom line,

which is that when two balls take five

hours, not even the awesome backdrop

of the most thrilling back nine in

the game is any compensation.

Why has it become so crushingly

slow? The increasing difficulty of

major championship venues like

Augusta is an obvious factor. But

some players now take so long

discussing what shot to play that

caddies should charge a consultation

fee.

"I love his pace of play," former

Open champion Ian Baker-Finch

continually told the American

television audience, referring to

Snedeker.

Which was true if you were

simply talking about the time he

stood over the ball, but rather

ignored the fact that he frequently

needed a 10-minute discussion with

his caddie before he got there.

What's the answer? For starters,

the organisers of majors and the

players themselves need to stop

blaming each other and accept that

for the whole thing to work, it needs

to be entertaining. Which means it

needs to be quicker.

Scroll down to read more:

Loving family man: Trevor Immelman with son Jacob after victory

On the European Tour they do a

pretty good job of policing slow play

and a similar system of vigilance

needs to be introduced as a matter of

urgency. With one notable exception.

Please, let's not fine the players for

first, second or third offences. We're

talking about ridiculously wealthy sportsmen here. Fining them a four-figure

sum belongs in the land of

empty gestures.

Instead, let's hand out one final

warning and, if that doesn't do the

trick, impose a one-shot penalty.

Yes, a few toys will be thrown as

culprits are named and shamed.

But

I guarantee you that play will speed

up dramatically. Fewer mistakes will

be made down the stretch because

the players won't be so mentally

jaded. Perhaps then, the Masters will

return to being the tournament you

want to go on and on.

Rather than

the tournament you think is never

going to end.

Els' putter comments wide of the mark

For all the copious mentions of

Gary Player in the Trevor Immelman

success story, you couldn't help

but ask yourself: whatever happened

to that other family friend, Ernie Els?

Turns out this is quite a touchy

subject. When Immelman achieved

his breakthrough victory in Germany

in 2004, using a belly putter, he was

aghast when Els chose that moment

to declare: "I think the belly putter

should be banned, it's cheating."

In a magazine article last year,

Immelman admitted: "I couldn't

understand his timing. I had known

him forever and he chose the

moment of my biggest victory to

make a statement like that."

Now Immelman has got his hands on

the title Els cherishes above all others

— and using a 'proper' putter to boot.

My wrong impression of Trevor...

Listening to the new

Masters champion Trevor

Immelman give a typically

gracious victory speech on

Sunday, I couldn't help but

contrast it to the time I first

heard him speak and an

episode that shows just

how wrong opening

impressions can be.

Not to put too fine a point

on it, I thought he was an

arrogant little so-and-so.

Immelman had just won his

semi-final match in the

Amateur Championship at

Royal St George's in 1997,

when he asked to use one

of the press phones to ring

home.

The next thing we

heard was: "I'll ring again

when I've won the final."

When the Scot Craig

Watson beat him the

following day, you thought

to yourself: there is a God.

Happily, the Immelman

that has crossed the

world's fairways these past

10 years couldn't be more

removed from that brash

character.

A more polite

young man you couldn't

wish to meet and he has

always been happy to stop

and chat.

His victory was certainly

the saving grace of this

particular Masters Sunday,

a warming human interest

story, surrounded as he

was by the loving family

who sacrificed so much to

give him his chance and

who have spent much of

the last year nursing him

back to health following

various ailments.

In particular, when he was

having a benign tumour

removed from below his

ribcage last December,

who could have guessed

that, by mid-April, he

would be able to cover the

seven-inch scar with a

Green Jacket?

Never on a Sunday, boys

All six Englishmen competing at

this year's Masters jointly led the

tournament at one stage or another.

Naturally, none of them was to be

seen when it mattered on Sunday.

This is the impression England's

leading players have created for

themselves, isn't it? In the public

eye, they have become the

equivalent of athletes who set the

pace on the first lap, only to move

aside when the going gets serious.

There's only one way to change

appearances, of course, and that begins on June 15. That's the date

of the final round of the U.S. Open,

by the way, not the first. I'm

assuming one of them will be

leading after the first.

In the meantime, readers of last

week's column, speculating on

whether some of them should have

spent more time learning to win in

Europe before rushing to America,

might care to note that Trevor

Immelman tucked some big

tournaments under his belt over

here before he headed west.

Daftest rule of the lot?

Daftest Rules in Golf might be

the one book that has yet to be

written.

Chapter one would cover

the rule which applies a one-stroke

penalty to a player whose

ball moves a fraction on the green

after he has addressed it.

Put simply, this is a rule that has

no basis in equity and so

shouldn't be in the statute book.

Paul Casey fell victim to it on

Sunday. Even more

heartbreakingly, American

amateur Michael Thompson was penalised on Friday when he had

a good chance of making the cut.

Here's an earth-shattering idea.

Instead of saluting a player for

being honest enough to call a

shot upon himself because his

ball has moved a smidgeon

without him having any intent

to hit it, why not allow him to

replace it with no penalty?

In

other words, instead of covering

ourselves with self-righteous

glory all the time, why don't we

do the right thing?