Time is funny isn’t it? In many ways, it’s the most precious thing we have, yet we’re more than happy to sit in dozing lethargy and waste it.

Before you know it, the years have hurtled by and your wrinkle-free, peaches and cream complexion has suddenly morphed into some wizened, crotchety assembly of gnarled features that resembles a clump of a raw ginger root.

Of course, the general passing of this time is not helped if you happen to watch golf. It can add years to you, after all.

Take Sunday night’s Genesis Open, an event which unravelled so slowly I was actually tempted to wheeze myself up off the seat and give the side of the tele a good old fashioned dunt to see if it would get things moving.

There have been a few heated topics doing the rounds in the game of late, from the European Tour’s controversial sojourn in Saudi Arabia to Sergio Garcia’s prolonged fit of petulance which led to him being disqualified from that same event.

Amid these new and recent additions to the list of golfing grumbles, the hoary chestnut of pace and play had almost been hidden away under the pile.

This fusty perennial of griping and groaning re-emerged at the weekend, though, as JB Holmes plodded to victory with a performance that was so slow, you half expected him to be covered in a light covering of dust at the prize giving ceremony.

As seems to be the norm, particularly on the PGA Tour, no whips were cracked and no punishments were dished out. The message seems clear; plod on boys, we’ll just turn a blind eye.

Of course, the one thing more tedious than slow play in this game is people who constantly drone on about the topic. But then, they have a point to drone on about in the sense of golf’s wider appeal.

A couple of the significant aspects which stunt the game’s development remains cost and time. In this breathless age of ours, where we do things quickly and demand things are done even quicker, the idea of spending five hours or so on a golf course – as delightful as it can be - holds little allure to many.

In the upper echelons of the professional game, meanwhile, Holmes is almost something of a serial offender. Only last year, he was roundly lambasted, yet not punished, for taking upwards of four minutes sizing up an approach at the last hole of the Farmers Insurance Open.

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Many thought that could act as a tipping point on the slow play issue but nobody at the PGA Tour seemed to bat an eyelid. Perhaps their eyes had closed with the boredom?

Back then, Holmes defended his actions by saying he was still trying to win a tournament, which he ultimately did not. He was, however, perfectly within his reason to point out the sizeable stakes being played for at the top of the tree on courses that are hellishly exacting. It’s not quite the weekly thrash for a couple of quid between Sandy and Roy at Linn Park municipal.

But golf is part of the entertainment business and there are plenty who simply find the spectacle a major turn off as they watch and wait for something to happen with the same sense of futile frustration displayed by a hedgehog that’s just realised it’s spent a good chunk of the mating season making amorous advances on a yard brush.

“Until sponsors and TV tell the commissioner you guys play too slow and we’re not putting money up, it’s a waste of time talking about it (slow play) because it’s not going to change,” suggested the former Masters champion Adam Scott the other week.

Like a lot of golfers at all levels, Holmes’ pace of play stems from the fact that he never seems to be ready to play when it’s his turn and only begins to plot a route to the hole when others in the group have battered away.

The result is a sigh-inducing series of ponderings, pointings and porings of the yardage book which resembles a hill walker consulting an Ordnance Survey map before a jolly yomp up the Great Shunner Fell.

There was one particular putt which took about one minute and 20 seconds to size up. You could have painted a still life watercolour of the scene on the green in that time.

The Rules of Golf state that, “it is recommended that the player make the stroke in no more than 40 seconds after he or she is (or should be) able to play without interference or distraction”.

It adds, “the player should usually be able to play more quickly than that and is encouraged to do so”.

The major tours have their own policies on what happens when players start falling out of position, and when to put them on the clock. There is no hard and fast rule, though.

The rule book itself only goes as far as a recommendation on pace of play, not an enforcement. And until officials take these recommendations and, well, enforce them, then the pace of play issue will continue to go round in very slow circles.