Time’s Not on Side of Spencer-Devlin, Penalized for Slow Play

For Muffin Spencer-Devlin, time stood still.

She thought she was just standing around minding her own business in the Uniden LPGA Invitational at Costa Mesa Saturday when they busted her for loitering.

She committed the offense right under the nose of tournament director Suzanne Jackson, who had been called over to check why the threesome, that also included tournament leader Laura Baugh and runner-up Mary Beth Zimmerman, had fallen so far behind.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” Spencer-Devlin said. “I was out there playing golf. I wasn’t watching Suzanne.”

After Spencer-Devlin bogeyed No. 14, Jackson walked over and told her she was being assessed a two-stroke penalty for slow play. That was the final, devastating blow in her disastrous 41-stroke back nine that saw her slip from one shot off the lead to nine behind with a third-round 76.

“I have to take a positive viewpoint and learn something from it,” Spencer-Devlin said as she hiked to the driving range to pound out her frustrations as dusk settled over the Mesa Verde Country Club.

Earlier, she was too upset to talk about it with reporters, emerging teary-eyed from the scorer’s tent off the 18th green after a 20-minute discussion with Jackson and Baugh.

Baugh took Spencer-Devlin’s side--”in a just cause,” Spencer-Devlin said--but Jackson wasn’t swayed.

“There’s no appeal,” Jackson said. “The buck stops with me.”

Spencer-Devlin, 32, has been on the tour since 1979, her only victory coming last year.

“Muffin is one of the more deliberate players,” Jackson said. “I don’t want to say she’s a slow player. We’ve timed her before (but) we’ve timed a lot of players.”

The 5-foot 11-inch native of Piqua, Ohio, conceded that she isn’t the tour’s fastest player, but she had never been penalized for playing too slowly.

“I’m very deliberate and very methodical because I have a tendency to be quick,” she said. “I’ve found that the more deliberate I can be in my pre-shot routine, the better chance I have of making a slow swing.

“On the hole I was timed on I was in trouble, so I was taking some extra time over the shots.”

Jackson said she was called by two-way radio to see why the group had fallen more than a full hole behind the threesome in front and gave Spencer-Devlin the benefit of the doubt before starting the clock on her.

“I made myself quite visible,” Jackson said. “The toughest thing a tournament official has to do is assess a two-stroke penalty.”

Even so, Jackson said, Spencer-Devlin exceeded the allowable 30-second average by 8 seconds on her tee shot, 50 on her second shot, 21 on her third and 24 on her first putt.

“The other players weren’t even close to a penalty,” Jackson said.

Spencer-Devlin’s caddy, Chris Harvey, said: “She always plays a little slow, but I didn’t realize we were behind. A couple of holes before we’d been up with the group ahead of us. We waited on the 10th tee, and then Muffin double-bogeyed (No. 11) and that put us behind.”

On the par-5 11th, Spencer-Devlin hit her second shot behind a tree, had to take a free drop off a cart path and hit another shot into a bunker before blasting out and two-putting for a 7, as Baugh birdied to suddenly jump four strokes in front.

“It takes a while to slap it around that way,” Harvey said.

Then, after the bogey on 14 when Jackson dropped the bomb, Harvey described Spencer-Devlin’s reaction.

“Shocked wasn’t the right word,” he said.

She was upset. By the time she reached the driving range, Spencer-Devlin had calmed down. Jackson had said that it made no difference that she was in the last group of the day and therefore wasn’t really holding anybody up.

“Yes, in my heart I think they should make an allowance there,” Spencer-Devlin said, “but their philosophy is that they have to treat everybody the same.

“Still, it didn’t seem . . . “

But Jackson explained to Spencer-Devlin that under LPGA policy, there is no warning involved. Jackson said the players decided they wanted it that way to avoid the distraction.

“She was actually quite pleasant,” Jackson said of the golfer’s reaction. “The players know when they’re out of position.”

Spencer-Devlin is the third player to be penalized on the LPGA tour this season. Two others were hit in last week’s event at Phoenix, and Nancy Lopez was assessed two strokes during her victory in the LPGA Championship last year.

“I wasn’t aware they were cracking down,” Spencer-Devlin said, “but it’s not something I’ve paid a lot of attention to.”