Golf Twitter lives to complain, and its favourite topic of all is slow play. Enter J.B. Holmes, who is in the final group on Saturday at the Open Championship and was already beaten up earlier this year at the Genesis Open, which he won, for his snail-like pace. This is a perfect storm of social-media whining the likes of which we see only a few times a season.
The thing is, Golf Twitter is right, as Holmes has done little to contradict the idea that he is the slowest player on tour (Ben Crane would like a word). Holmes has been bad this week, and it is likely to get only worse if he remains in contention for his first Major championship over the next 24 hours. As it stands, he’s near the top of the leaderboard, and with the added pressure of the final round at a Major, along with some brutal weather descending on Royal Portrush on Sunday, J.B. could set records for slowness.
Those on social media are doing their part to make sure it doesn’t happen, but the R&A is not likely to do much, and nothing will happen next week at the WGC event in Memphis or the week after that or the week after that. J.B. and others will continue to take their time. The vicious cycle will continue. For now, all we can do is shout and scream. Here were some of the better shouts and screams on Twitter from Saturday morning as J.B. turtled his way around Royal Portrush’s front nine:
