Mailbag: Shot Clock, Is Wooded Golf Not Fan Friendly?, Green Landscaping

April 17, 2026 by Charlie Eisenhood in Opinion

You can email me anytime at [email protected] with questions, comments, ideas — whatever you’ve got.

Q: Getting my thoughts in to you before the upcoming “moratorium” on the rules enforcement topic.

I’ll get to the time rules, but in my view the best example of the sad state of the rules enforcement at the Champions Cup was Anthony Barela taking a provisional on hole 15 in round three because his disc came to rest in a required relief area. We know there was a marshal following the card. Why didn’t he come over when AB was confused about where the next shot should be played from? He could have clarified the Required Relief Area rules then and there. Instead we watched AB take three extra shots. Why? In ball golf, if a player has a question they ask a rules official to confer, and the situation gets dealt with in real time. I don’t see why that didn’t happen on Saturday.

It seems like a lot of legacy PDGA higher ups want to keep the sport the way it has always been — self-officiated and laissez-faire. But the sport is attracting both real sponsor attention now and sports gambling. We can’t continue like it’s still the mid 90s and there’s not a live broadcast of every round.

As you mentioned, the broadcast suffers when the time rules are not enforced. When a player is pump-faking and smacking chalk bags and is in a constant state of being “about to throw,” the camera can’t cut away. We’re all forced to watch nothing happen for 60 to 90 seconds. This isn’t good TV. It is aggravating, and it led to a really difficult viewing experience last week (even though once the shots were thrown, they were really good).

Both baseball and tennis have put players on real, individualized time clocks in the past five years. Both sports’ products have improved immensely. Ask anyone if they miss five hour baseball games. These clocks work because they time specific actions. Baseball did not adopt a “this inning should take 10 minute clock” but instead adopted a specific “this pitch action should take 15 seconds” clocks. Josh wants to go to group times, like in ball golf, but that isn’t working in ball golf. Ball golf is so slow and getting slower. They have the same enforcement issues as disc golf.

We have the right rule this year, we just need to enforce it. Have someone with a visible electronic clock stand on the hole with the players of the top three cards and consistently enforce the rule.

– Steve A.

The moratorium is in effect on The Upshot but I haven’t yet addressed this in the Mailbag, so you snuck it in under the wire.