U.S. WOMEN'S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

May 30, 1996

Kendra Graham

KENDRA GRAHAM: Well, obviously, Rhonda, we're not pleased with the pace of play. The last group finished in five hours and 27 minutes. Unfortunately, we got behind the eight-ball early on today. The ruling that took place on No. 5 with the 10 o'clock group was one that took quite some time. And as Rhonda mentioned I was called in as a rover to the rules official who was involved with the ruling initially, and it was complicated, as any ruling with a temporary immoveable obstruction is. At the time I was on the 17th hole and the ruling took place on 5, so it took me quite some time to get there. In the meantime they were working on it and two groups went through. But when I did arrive I worked with Betsy Rawls, with both Dottie Pepper and Alice Miller, because, again, as I said, it's a very complicated ruling, it takes time. Where both players were dropping was in the woods, in the pine needles, so oftentimes you have several drops involved in that case where you do have to have a redrop. And it took quite sometime. And I think from that point on we had three groups waiting on the tee the rest of the day.

KENDRA GRAHAM: That's right. In the case with Alice Miller she initially dropped not in the correct place. Again, a temporary immoveable obstruction ruling is complicated. She doesn't drop in the right club length so that was considered a no drop. And then she -- she dropped for the first time, it rolled back; to place it to she needed to redrop. It ended up she had three drops, the first one not counting. Again, it takes time. And all the measuring, because of where they were, deciding what type of shot to hit, it took a long time. And it just kind of sunk us for the rest of the day.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Yes.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Yes, the second hole played very difficult today. And that started early this morning and got a little better and then got worse again. There was about a 15-minute wait there for a good part of the afternoon; certainly for all the last groups.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Well, there aren't really any guidelines, we don't have anything set in writing. It's one decision that's made by -- we have a walking rules official with each group, so the walking rules official is involved, if they think it will be better to have one group play through, than to wait on the tee, they'll go ahead and do it. There's no set guidelines, it's just decided upon at the given moment for a particular situation.

KENDRA GRAHAM: I'm not really sure, because I wasn't there at the time, but I think it was at probably three or four or five minutes when they realized how extensive the rulings were going to be with this group.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Well, there was a rover right there who got involved initially and the player wanted another opinion and they're entitled to that. I serve as a member of the rules golf committee for this championship, so that was why I was called in specifically.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Probably ten minutes. I was timing a group on the 17th hole at the time and had to go back by 16, which is a par 3, got caught there and ended up going down the road. But it probably took ten minutes, from start to finish. And unfortunately, we're having a little trouble with our radios out here, where I was and where the ruling was to the right of No. 5, the reception wasn't very good. And as I'm sure you can all appreciate, if you only get half of the information you really can't make a decision that far away. Anything we can do via the radio we'll try to do. But if you're getting half of it, it could make all the difference in the world. So it wasn't something that I could do from that distance.

KENDRA GRAHAM: The original rules official with the group was a woman by the name of Carol Falk, and Betsy Rawls was the rover who was called in initially.

KENDRA GRAHAM: F-a-l-k.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Yes.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Quite frankly we worked very hard on pace of play today. We had six rovers out there, not only being involved in rules situations, but in pace of play situations. We had a number of groups timed all day long today. We did have two players penalized. So it wasn't that we sat idly by today. We worked on this pace of play problem from I'd say about 9 o'clock this morning on. Now, you do get to a point where the groups are out of their allotted time, but still in position with the group in front of them. So as long as they're spaced evenly there's not any place for them to go. But we have a very strict pace of play policy here and we tried our best today to have a good pace of play and we're going to try as hard tomorrow and hopefully we'll get a few good breaks.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Yes, we are. One thing that was made several years ago that you may or may not be aware of, we decreased the size of the field here from 156, we now have 150 players to start. That was one attempt at having a more manageable size to the field. We have adopted a pace of play policy we've had in effect for several years, it's a combination of the policy, the policy used at our Men's Championships and the policy that's used on the LPGA tour. And one of the goals of this policy is for an overall round type of, in this case, four hours and four minutes here we felt was very reasonable, for certainly first groups to play in four hours and hour minutes. I think we all realize we're going to lose time during the day, when you play from the first tee and you've got 50 groups starting. But we have been analyzing it. We're still analyzing it. We're trying to fine tune it. As I said, we had a lot of rovers out there. We have an official with each group to keep us informed as to what's going on. And I think the main thing about pace of play and a pace of play policy is not wanting to penalize players, it's getting in to start timing them as soon as possible so that you can hopefully alleviate the problems that occur behind a slow group. And that's where we define this out of position for a group. And as soon as a group is out of position we get in there and start timing. The hope is when you're timing they're going to speed up, move along and catch up with the group in front and never cause a delay behind; that's the goal. Unfortunately every now and then when you're in there timing there are certain guidelines that say when a player has to be penalized. And that happened today. But we're constantly looking at it, constantly working on it. It was hard to really see where we ended up last year at the Broadmoor because of the delays of play because of the weather, and we were thinking we were going to get a good look at it this year. And I think we still will. We've got a lot of information to go by. Our rules officials fill out a card and it shows what time they finish each hole. It notes any delays that they have, either a ruling or sitting on a tee. So we can really look at that hole by hole. I'm not sure we're going to find the secret in all that, but we're going to try. I don't think we can stop looking at the fact that this is the U.S. Women's Open Championship, it's the national championship for women. We're at one of the finest golf courses in the country that is set up to define a national championship -- excuse me, a national champion by the end of play, hopefully, on Sunday. So it's tough. It's hard. It's an Open championship. We've got players from all over the world, amateurs, professionals, and when that bell goes off things tighten up. We're going to keep working on it. It's not a lost cause.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Yes, I can. They were players No. 31 and 32. But I guess you want names. Lynda Jensen and Holly Reynolds, 8:40 group this morning.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Yes.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Well, we had a couple last year. I think we had one on Thursday and one on Friday last year, if I'm not mistaken. So it's hard to really gauge; hard to say.

KENDRA GRAHAM: Well, I'll give you an example. One of our officials with the 1:30 group mentioned as she went from 15 green to 16 tee that at that time her group was an hour and a half out of their allotted time, what we said they should have played in. And they had waited for 53 minutes. So if we look at that, I think we would have been looking at 4:35, 4:40, maybe, last groups. And in all reality, as I told you earlier, we're looking at a four hour four minute round time. And we know that's going to increase as the day goes on. But that's okay, because as long as that spacing stays, that the groups stay in position, but you are slowly going to gain a little during the day. But I really thought that we could have last groups play in four and a half hours. That's what we were gearing everything towards.