Because this movie is famous, and a lot of people find it very funny (although honestly I don't think that scene in particular is particularly funny, having just actually watched it), it is apparently considered acceptable to adopt that line as the slogan for the anti-slow play campaign. And the golfing authorities are running lots of ads now on this theme, that involve famous players either telling other people or being told by other people, "While we're young!" Some of these are actually kind of funny: a few involve Arnold Palmer saying the line, which is funny since he's, you know, eighty; another features Tiger Woods carefully studying a putt, and then being told by a group of young kids who are waiting behind him on a miniature golf course to hurry it up. He misses the putt, they say something about how he thinks it's a major, and then he mutters, "no respect."
But though the ad is funny, it's that last part, for me, that's the problem. The whole rush to hurry everything up is really problematic in a lot of ways, in both golf and baseball, where it's also a thing. No one says this in baseball, since the last twenty years featured an actual threat to the integrity and spirit of the game, but in golf people are fond of saying that slow play is the biggest problem in the game. They mean this both as to championship golf and as to recreational golf. In the former context, this can often involve forcing players to take less and less time over their shots, and then assessing stroke penalties if they fail to comply, if they fall a bit behind the group in front of them. Sometimes even if it's the last group of a major championship on the weekend. Like, when it matters more than any other time ever to plan your shots well.
And now, on top of this penalty structure that I've always considered somewhat unjust, they've added this bit of outright nastiness. The guy who speaks this line in the movie, who I believe is played by Rodney Dangerfield, is being an asshole here. As I understand the situation, his group have just showed up to the tee and they discover that they're behind another group that hasn't yet teed off. Because one of those players in that previous group spends a little while waggling over his shot, while being distracted by Dangerfield's obnoxious, bombastic commentary, he decides to heckle him over his "slow play." He's not playing slowly yet. His group hasn't teed off yet. Now, if they stood around on the tee for several minutes while the group ahead of them had been long since out of range, that would have been blameworthy, but there's no evidence they did that. Instead, the player on the tee is being pestered to hurry his shot.
And that's the key, for me. I'm not an advocate of slow play, by any means. There are a lot of things that I think golfers can and should do to make sure they don't play too slowly and, in particular, that they don't waste time. There are little tricks like leaving your bag on the side of the green that you'd naturally walk off toward to get to the next hole, there's the general benefit of walking quickly, etc. But I strongly believe that it is important for people to take sufficient time over their shots. For instance, I definitely notice that when I have a short pitch shot ahead of me, it's very helpful to know exactly how long it is. I'm trying to hit the ball within three feet of the hole, after all, and if my distance estimate is off by one yard that makes a big difference. So I like to pace such shots off before I hit them. That takes a bit of time. But it's not a waste of time, it's a use of time. And, as long as I'm right that having this information is genuinely helpful, I'll gain some of the time back by taking fewer shots over the course of my round. That's on top of the benefit of taking fewer shots in itself, since that is, you know, the point of the game of golf. To take as few shots as possible.
Accordingly, I feel like the correct principle is that anything you do that lengthens the round but which you do for the purpose of improving your golf game is justified (though it may not actually be effective; there are those who believe that a short, quick pre-shot routine is psychologically helpful, which may be true for some people), while anything you do that is not even intended to be for this purpose and that lengthens the round is unjustified. Basically I think people should be the opposite of Cary Middlecoff, who was reputed to be the slowest player on tour getting to his ball but the fastest once he got to it. Do everything you can to get yourself from one shot to the next efficiently, but take enough time over each shot to plan it out correctly and make sure you know what you're doing.
Dangerfield, however, wants the guy on the tee ahead of him to rush his actual shot, to cut short his pre-shot routine whose purpose is, presumably, to get himself comfortable over the shot. Predictably, the guy foozles his shot into some woods. Of course he did. He got heckled, and rushed out of getting himself comfortable. Having to deal with that ball in the woods probably won't speed up his round, either. More troublingly, however, some of these "While We're Young" ads, produced by the USGA and/or the PGA Tour, are also about rushing your shots. In one of them, Arnold Palmer accosts Clint Eastwood on the 7th tee at Pebble Beach, where he had been trying to calculate various things about how to play the shot. In the one I mentioned with Tiger, he was specifically in the act of looking over a putt.
And actually, that one is particularly telling. The kids comment, derisively, that Tiger seems to think he's playing in a major. The implication is that the fact that it isn't a major, and therefore isn't "important," means he ought play his round in a manner which is sub-optimal for minimizing his score. And I think Tiger's comment about "no respect" is spot-on here, though since he agreed to appear in the commercial I assume he doesn't actually agree with it. This outlook involves asserting that, for those of us who aren't playing for millions of dollars, our actual quality of play is unimportant, and should be sacrificed on the altar of getting the people behind us off the course a few minutes sooner. Because, apparently, playing golf is something that must be gotten over with as soon as possible, even if that means playing it worse. Or, you know, not actually recording a score. I get that fairly few of us casual recreational amateur players are actually serious about our scoring, but some of us are. I am. And when I have a ten-foot putt ahead of me, for par or bogey or for an eight or whatever, I would argue I have every right to take that putt seriously, to respect it and treat it as important. It is important to me, and that means I can and should refuse to short-change it. Obviously there are limits to how much time one can spend over a shot productively, but situations like those in the While We're Young commercials don't particularly approach those limits.
Of course, it's not entirely true that this campaign is just about denigrating the importance of amateur recreational golf, since it is tied in with the efforts, backed by more actual enforcement, to force professionals playing for enormous purses and prestigious trophies, to hurry their rounds as well. This, I imagine, is probably driven largely by the television networks, who want to be able to fit their coverage into their schedule as neatly as possible. In baseball, of course, television networks are probably the main culprits of slower games, with their insistence on various commercials and such, though again part of the cause is people adopting result-optimizing strategies like working deep counts and trying to draw walks. In both cases, however, the way it feels to me is that it is the anti-slow play campaign which intrudes upon the integrity of the game, insisting upon the importance of something other than the game. In fact, the importance of everything other than the game, since the whole point is to compress each game into as little time as possible so that the rest can be used for other stuff.
So here's my bottom line when it comes to slow play: take the game as seriously as you want to, and if you're playing at the championship level take it as seriously as you can; take as much time as you need to satisfy the demands of that serious attitude; and don't waste time doing things that aren't related to playing the game well. Walk quickly, know how to take efficient routes to and from the ball, work on planning your shot while your playing partners are hitting, etc. Keep pace with the group in front of you, and if you can't, let faster groups play through. (In fact, this is to my mind the most important fact, that any group on a golf course which is keeping pace with the group in front of it or which is on pace to catch back up to the group in front of it later in the round [which can happen because of things about the flow of the course] is doing precisely nothing wrong when it comes to slow play.) But do not, do not, obnoxiously tell the group in front of you to hit it "while we're young." If you do, you'll be an asshole*. And absolutely positively do not hit into the group in front of you as a way to send the message that they're playing too slowly. That shouldn't have to be part of the discussion, but I've heard people contemplate that act, apparently seriously. If the group in front of you is playing too slowly and falling behind, ask to play through them. If you have an appointment that means you only have an hour and forty-five minutes to fit in your round, you might have to accept playing only seven holes; maybe you should've gone to the driving range instead, or something, but in any event that is your problem, not other people's. In general the slow pace at public courses is the result of crowding, which is the result of popularity; accordingly, it is a sign of the strength, rather than the weakness, of the game.
Wastefully slow play is annoying and inconvenient. Being nasty to other people because you think they're playing too slowly is mean, which is far worse. So lighten up about it, relax and enjoy your time on the course. And it'd be really nice if the authorities would stop being on the wrong side of this issue, and on the side of being a jerk to your neighboring fellow golfers.
*Although, I will say that when I was at the recent U.S. Open at Merion, I heard a couple of fans pretend to yell (and in fact say quietly enough that there's no way he heard them) "while we're young!" at Tiger Woods while he stood over a certain wedge shot on the par-5 second hole. That, I thought, was actually pretty funny, since Tiger himself has appeared in those ad campaigns. I believe he knocked the wedge shot to about eight inches from the hole, so I guess the time he took was worth it.
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