Golf : Tour to Try Twosomes in Effort to Speed Play

You are going to see more and more twosomes this season on the PGA Tour, which is going to that format whenever it can in the last two rounds of its tournaments.

The idea is to speed up slow play.

Mike Shea, the PGA tournament director of operations, thinks twosomes can play a round 45 minutes to an hour faster than groups of three.

“This whole thing, which is still in its infancy stage, is just an attempt to improve the pace of play,” he said.

Shea said that threesomes average playing a round in about 4 1/2 hours. When the PGA experimented with twosomes in a few tournaments last year, Shea said the average time of play ranged from 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 hours.

As good as that sounds, there is one very big hitch. To get a field of 78 off the tee in twosomes takes about five hours.

Say it takes 3 1/2 hours to play a round. And television networks require their golf programming to be over by, say, 6 p.m. in New York, 3 on the West Coast.

That means that in West Coast tournaments, the first twosome would have to tee off at 6:30 a.m.

“We’re not going to do that,” Shea said.

So that means twosomes won’t be used in any West Coast events.

The whole idea of playing in pairs came up as a suggestion during player meetings and was then approved for study by the PGA policy board.

Paul Azinger said that his peers are all for playing speedier rounds and he finds twosomes appealing.

“It’s a lot more fun for the players, much more relaxing, if you’re playing with somebody you like,” Azinger said.

“And if you’re playing with someone you don’t like, you don’t have to talk. You don’t have to look at him for 3 1/2 hours instead of 4 1/2 hours.”

Johnny Miller, the 1987 AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am champion, is going to have a new amateur partner when he defends his title--John Miller Jr.

The younger Miller, 17, has “a 2 to 5 handicap” according to his father and is committed to taking a shot at the PGA Tour.

“This is the first time I’ll be able to play with my son,” said the senior Miller, 40. “It’s a dream come true. I’ve always envied guys like Jack Nicklaus who have been able to play with their sons.”

The PGA Tour will move to the desert this week for the $1-million Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, a five-day pro-am event beginning Wednesday.

In the first fearsome fivesome will be Hope, Gerald Ford and defending champion Corey Pavin.

Play will be on four courses--La Quinta, the Palmer Course at PGA West, Bermuda Dunes and Indian Wells. The low pros and ties will play Sunday’s final round at Indian Wells, the host course.

Sam Snead said he hears a lot of critics of today’s pro golfers. But now that he is 75, he understands what the current generation is going through.

“A lot of people say they look like robots. They don’t smile,” said Snead. “Heck, they’re playing for so much money, they don’t have time to smile.”

More Snead: It is his opinion that more players lead consecutive rounds than in his day. But there was a reason for it back then, he said.

“Used to be, a player shot a good round, he got drunk that night and said ‘Well, that’s the best I can do.’ ”

Who designs the best courses?

According to a survey of 104 touring pros by the Tournament Players Committee, the majority favored a TPC course designed by Jay Morrish.

Morrish was the lead designer with the Jack Nicklaus organization for 12 years and was responsible for such courses as Bear Creek, Desert Highlands and Shoal Creek.

Morrish teamed with Tom Weiskopf in 1984 and they have designed nine courses, their newest Marbella, an 18-hole layout being shaped in a valley in San Juan Capistrano.

With either Weiskopf or Ben Crenshaw as design partners, Morrish’s creations were favored by 53 of the 104 pros surveyed. Pete Dye’s courses got 19 votes.

Golf Notes

U.S. Open champion Scott Simpson, seven other 1987 PGA Tour winners and eight baseball and football Hall of Fame members are part of the field in the Howard Cosell Day with the All-Americans Tuesday at The Club at Morningside in Rancho Mirage. The 18-hole charity event raises funds for college scholarships through the All-American Scholarship Foundation, which has awarded 180 four-year scholarships worth more than $2 million. The Hall of Famers are former baseball stars Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Ernie Banks, Ralph Kiner and Duke Snider, and football’s George Blanda and Sid Gillman.

The Newport Pro-Am, which raises funds for Hoag Memorial Hospital, is being started a day early so it won’t have to compete with the Super Bowl Jan. 31. The event now is scheduled for Jan. 29-30 at the Newport Beach Country Club.