Slow Play - What could be done and what should be done?

Slow play in Snooker. This is something that's got everybody talking lately, so I've chosen to come over to the blog to debate the possible pro's and con's of possible developments that could be made and whether slow play is a problem and in what ways it can be dealt with. The first thing that's worth noting is that I've developed quite the one-sided opinion on this, to the stage that i'll soon be having my own stopwatch out timing some of these matches for myself.

Is the problem getting worse? Well, there are a few indicators that this may be happening. Firstly, at the Ruhr Open, Alan McManus and Barry Pinches set a new world record for the longest professional frame at 100 minutes. The match overall lasted 5 hours for 7 frames, so even without that 1 hour 40 minute frame, the other six still took 3 hours and 20 minutes. An average of just above 33 minutes per frame played. A week earlier, Alan McManus was involved in a best of 11 with Ross Muir, which again went the distance, and took over 7 hours to be played, and the best part of 3 hours to reach it's mid-session interval after the first four frames. At the Riga Open, a first round match between Nigel Bond and Peter Ebdon set a new record for the longest best-of-7 frames match. In an age where sports like Tennis and Golf are attempting to sort out slow play, with players being seen to be put on the clock in the marquee group of a major championship, while the top players in Tennis are now being warned for taking too long serving the ball, snooker appears to be going backwards.

The return argument to all of this is that there has always been slow play in snooker, so why should things change now. Complaints are starting to become a lot more common amongst players about slow play, simply because they feel the sport needs to move on. These are players that don't want the sport to go backwards again, and have ambitions to see it up there with the likes of Golf and Tennis at the top of the tree in terms of individual sports. The key for that to happen is to earn a greater following the USA and of course become an Olympic sport. What better way to become a global sport than to put yourself in the biggest global event there is. However, who's going to want to watch snooker at the Olympics if frames are consistently lasting over 30 minutes and players are taking 10 seconds longer a shot than is truly necessary. To expand, you always have to look beyond what you have now and dream bigger. The problem with trying to conquer a wider fan base in this day and age is that people seem to have very short attention spans. Snooker also doesn't want to alienate it's current, loyal fan base which is where a shot clock may well go too far. Yet there is still a lot of middle ground between where we are know and where we would be with the introduction of giving players a time limit on shots.

On the opening two days of the European Tour events when 56 matches are scheduled to take place over usually 10 or 11 tables in the arena, play usually starts at 9.30am local time, and regularly goes on past midnight. The question to be asked there is, is that an issue of slow play or poor scheduling from the tournament organisers? When you look at Asian Tour events and they use 4 or 5 days to play the same amount of snooker and you start to wonder why that isn't possible on the European Tour. Late finishes wouldn't be such a huge talking point if one half of the draw played Last 128 and Last 64 matches on a Thursday, the other half on the Friday, and Saturday was used for Last 32 and Last 16 games with the quarter's, semi's and final on Sunday. Fans on Twitter say they enjoy a late finish, but it's incredibly tough for the players when they finish a match at midnight one day and have to come back the next morning or afternoon to do it all again. It's also often not the fault of the player that finishes latest. Mark Williams won through against Aditya Mehta in the Ruhr Open at 1.30am local time on the Friday, after spending around 4 hours waiting between matches through no fault of his own. Ironically, Mark is one of the players calling for slow play to be dealt with.

Under Section 4 of the snooker rules, Point 1 Conduct, Part A, the rule specifically states "In the event of (I) a player taking an abnormal amount of time over a stroke or the selection of a stroke...the referee shall either... (V) warn the player that in the event of any such further conduct the frame will be awarded to his opponent."

That rule to me says two things. The first of those is that this rule needs to be a lot clearer on what an "abnormal" amount of time is, in order for any referee to be in a position to enforce the law. People that know this rule exists, will believe that referee's don't think that play is slow enough to warn players. However, I believe the real issue is that because the rule is so vague, it's almost impossible to warn a player against slow play, when there is no word in the rules as to what constitutes slow play. The full definition of the word abnormal is to "deviate from what is normal or usual". So in that case, the referee's need a full understanding under the letters of the law of how long shots should take under certain circumstances, taking into account the pressure of the match situation, the type of shot being thought out, and how many different shots that are available to a player. I think that if the rule was more specific, then that would by no means be problem solved, but a step in the right direction at least.

I think this leads me on nicely to an idea that I've stolen from the rules of Golf (quite shamelessly) and believe would fit in better in snooker. Under the code of Golf Etiquette, the rules on pace of play are simple...Keep up with the group that is playing ahead of you. According to the R&A pace of play policy, there are 3 factors affecting pace of play. These are the Players, the Course (Conditions) and the overall management of play, which can be put down to how many players are playing in a group, gaps between tee off times and so on.

To translate that to snooker, there are 3 things that should be taken into account for slow play, the amount of time players are taking to play shots and complete frames of a match, the match and table conditions, looking at how much pressure is on players at high stakes points in games, and generally how easy the table conditions are for making fluent play possible, and the scheduling. In other words, if a match is expected to take X amount of hours for a maximum of Z possible frames, then if X amount of hours have passed and only Y amount of frames have been played, play is too slow and the main offending player or both players should be warned of their conduct accordingly.

I also believe this should be done on a "three strikes and your out" basis. For example, if a referee's gut instinct is telling him "Player X is taking abnormally long over shots regularly for no foreseeable reason, under the code of conduct" then he should quietly warn the player that his pace of play is too slow and he has now been "put on the clock". For those of you that have just read the word clock there and assumed I mean a loud and brash shot clock, the like of which is used in the snooker shoot-out then you are wrong. What I mean by being put on the clock is that the referee quietly times how long a player is taking over a large range of shots, whether that be between strikes of the cue ball in a break, or from getting to the table to taking the shot in a safety battle. If the referee then decides that on average he is taking an "abnormal" amount of time (something that needs to be made much less vague by the WPBSA) then a player gets a second warning. That warning should detail to the player that if he doesn't increase his average rate of play that a frame will be awarded to his opponent, as in Section 4 Point 1 of the rules that I pointed out earlier.


If that doesn't solve out slow play (which it certainly would do if players start to lose frames for being consistently slow). Then and only then would you have to look for things such as shot clocks being brought into the game. Then, the governing body would have to decide what constitutes what is an "abnormal" amount of time for a shot, set the shot clock at something that players shouldn't exceed unless there were abnormal circumstances, and give players 3 "Unlimited time" extensions per frame, so that on occasions such as being in a horrible snooker or having to think a long time about a difficult shot you have as much time as you need to think it out. What annoys a lot of people is when players average 30 seconds a shot or over that in extreme cases to play simple pots with easy to obtain position. When players take over 45 seconds to a minute to work out an easy positional shot and commit to it, they're either trying too hard or making a deliberate attempt to disrupt their opponents concentration while they are away from the table, which would be classed as unsporting behaviour.

I don't have a problem with high pressured frames lasting up to an hour because of balls running scrappy. That's the game of snooker. What I do mind is two players averaging 30 minutes and above to play every frame of snooker in a match, that's unnecessary and is killing the fluency of the game. Every player is at his best when he finds his fluency, so by encouraging faster play, we would be encouraging more fluent and therefore better snooker for players to play and spectators to watch.

If you look at the players in the top 16, they each have their individual styles, but none are deliberately slow with regularity. There are times when I've watched certain players and seen them play deliberately slowly for no reason, and the two things to notice are that: a) they can quickly get themselves in a tangle with shot selection through overthinking and b) they are not huge break builders because they appear to lack any fluency to their game.

I've seen some quite simply ridiculous comments on this subject, with certain people suggesting that if players played quicker they'd all play like "Judd Trump's and Ronnie O'Sullivan's". This couldn't be further from the truth. Players would still have their individual styles, they'd just be more conscious of the time they take to make decisions, and could very well become better decision makers because of this. The next of the ridiculous comments I have seen, is to say that people would be "rushed" into shots, which again is wrong. That would only be the case if a strict 20 second shot clock was put into place with no time extensions put in place. People also believe that this would discourage negative play and safety play, which again is wrong. One of the slowest players in the game (and I hope he doesn't mind my saying) is Peter Ebdon, and while he takes a long time to think of shots and has a quite a slow shot routine, he often thinks of incredibly attacking shots that many other players wouldn't even envision and his eye for the game is impeccable.

At the end of the day, the decision is obviously in the hands of the likes of Barry Hearn and Jason Ferguson running the sport and they have a fantastic grasp of the bigger picture for snooker. If they feel a change is necessary somewhere down the line to keep the sport in touch, then they will certainly make it without question. It would also be intriguing to see how many players on the tour would vote for a change to slow play rules and how many would not be in support of this.