Now here’s an idea whose time has come: golf for fast players only.

We all know that slow play is one of the banes of the game, whether we’re watching JB Holmes or Ben Crane plumb-bob a putt for the 50th time on TV or standing in the fairway waiting for Johnny Never-Was to go ahead and putt the hell out for his triple.

Friends, the Angel Park Golf Club in Las Vegas feels your pain. Courtesy of Waggle Room, we bring you the story of Express Lane golf! Hallelujah!

As long as you can get around the Arnold Palmer-designed course in less than four hours, you can play their Mountain Course at top speed. You sign a release stating that you agree to haul club, understanding that you could be asked to skip a hole to pick up the pace if necessary, and then you take one of the earliest tee times and off you go.

The course’s management, OB Sports Golf Management, reports some solid success with the program, and may begin instituting it at other courses.

Sounds like a decent arrangement. Works much better than our idea of air horns and cattle prods, though with a bit less satisfaction.

No speed limit at Las Vegas’ Angel Park Golf Club [Waggle Room]

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This weekend, the PGA Tour is in Hilton Head, South Carolina, home of the Harbour Town Golf Course and its distinctive candy-cane lighthouse overlooking the 18th hole. With that in mind, we present 10 more of the most distinctive off-course features in golf. Get those clubs packed to knock a few of these off your list!

The Clubhouse at St. Andrews: The magisterial clubhouse overlooking the 18th green at St. Andrews is one of golf’s most famous off-course features. Every time I’ve played this course on a video game, I’ve spanged one off the front face of the clubhouse, which is probably why I’ve never been invited to play the real thing. (The Old Course Hotel, which overlooks the 17th tee, also fits here.)

The waves at Pebble Beach’s seventh: If the waves come into play in your golf game at Pebble, you’re in a world of hurt. Still, the crashing waves are unforgettable, one of the game’s most enduring elements. Ryo Ishikawa there is trying to block it out.

The Statue of Liberty, Liberty National Golf Course: All of Liberty National, home of the Barclays, boasts views of Manhattan, but this one, with Lady Liberty in the background, is particularly cameraworthy.

Ailsa Craig, Turnberry: It sits out there in the water like some creepy whale, or maybe like that other island in "Lost," and it remains a silent viewer of some of the most amazing golf in history. Tom Watson is undecided on whether he ever wants to see it again. (And hey, look: there’s Ryo Ishikawa again! That dude’s everywhere!)

Firestone Country Club ball: Looming over the famous Firestone Country Club, this would appear to be a ball teed up perfectly for whoever can wield that monster 90-foot-tall TaylorMade driver in San Diego.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Brickyard Crossing Golf Club: Several of the holes of this golf club are in fact inside IMS, which means you’ve got to get your golf cart up to about 200 mph between holes.

The Korean Border, Camp Bonifas Golf Course: All right, "course" is a misnomer; Camp Bonifas in South Korea is a single-hole, 192-yard par-3. But if you drift the ball too far in one direction or the other, it lands amidst land mines. Probably want to just let that one go.

The Kelani Valley Railroad, Royal Colombo Golf Club, Sri Lanka: Train tracks traverse the fairway on four holes at the Royal Colombo. Careful with that drive, my friend.

Mt. Fuji, Taiheiyo Club’s Gotemba Course, Japan. That’s one of the most magnificent views in the world right there. Why, you could probably sneak in a couple extra strokes while your mates were staring at the view. Just sayin’.

International hole, Ambush Golf Course, Lajitas, Texas. We’re stretching the definition of "off-course" with this one, but it’s worth it. There’s a special tee where you can tee off in America and your ball crosses the Rio Grande to land in Mexico. (You can’t go get your ball.) Along with the Green Zone Golf Course, where nine holes are in Finland and nine are in Sweden, it’s the only place in the world where you can golf in two countries.

Got other suggestions? Fire away in the comments!

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Say a golf fan was on a flight across an ocean, and the plane suddenly had some engine problems. Nothing could be fixed, and on this early 2009 flight, this lucky golf fan ended up on an island. Unfortunately for him, there is no volleyball, but the man kept himself alert with thoughts like what Tiger Woods was able to do for years and years, and how great it must be to hit the ball like his legend.

Now, the man is suddenly found, and brought back to reality. He doesn’t know a lot, but he knows this: "I could have been on that island for a decade and Tiger Woods would still be the most intimidating athlete in existence." Sadly, as we know, that is far from the truth, and it has come so far as to bring the No. 1-ranked player in the world, Martin Kaymer, to the microphone on this issue.

Kaymer, who has won more major championships in the last two years than Woods, told the Daily Record that the Masters was a perfect example of the new-age player not worrying about what one golfer is doing on the golf course. While it seemed in the past that the second Woods’ name started creeping up the leaderboard, everyone would wilt like a daisy in the middle of a Phoenix summer, that just isn’t the case anymore, and exhibit A is Augusta National.

"You could see it a couple of weeks ago at The Masters. Tiger was playing fantastic the first nine on Sunday but there wasn’t really somebody who was scared of him any more.

"In the last round they were playing fantastic golf – Adam Scott, Charl Schwartzel and Jason Day – so the fear has gone. Obviously you still have a lot of respect for him but you’re not scared any more."

While Tiger lovers could obviously point to the fact that Kaymer is speaking about a tournament he didn’t even make the cut in, the point is well taken, and said appropriately; the name "Tiger Woods" just doesn’t carry the same boom that it once did.

If Tiger is coming up the leaderboard, everyone that plays golf knows that now, after all he’s been through, he could tank on the final holes just like any other talented golfer. It seemed back in the day, when Tiger needed to make a putt, it went dead center, but this is 2011, and that just doesn’t happen.

So while it may seem like a dig from Kaymer, it really comes across as just a truth now in the golf world. He’s just another pro now, not the stalking Tiger that wore the intimidating red shirt and always went home with the biggest trophy during the most important tournament.

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We’re back again at the Heritage, the site of 2010′s most impressive moments of honesty and integrity on the golf course. A quick refresher: Brian Davis was facing Jim Furyk in a playoff at the then-Verizon Heritage. Furyk was in the midst of a career resurgence; Davis still hadn’t notched a single PGA Tour win.

Davis’ approach shot went into the beachy garbage around the green. When he tried to chip up, he sensed a tick in his backswing, like he struck something. Hitting a loose impediment in your backswing is a two-stroke penalty, which would effectively end the playoff in Furyk’s favor.

Thing is, it wasn’t some eagle-eyed TV viewer who called in the penalty. No, it was Davis himself. He called over a rules official, and they viewed the replay on TV. Only a slow-motion replay showed any movement. The rules official made the call, and Furyk got the tournament win.

Now, one year later, ESPN’s Jeff Bradley caught up with Davis. And now, the extent of what honesty cost him is clear:

"Friends said to me, ‘That penalty cost you $400,000,’" Davis recalls. "And I said, ‘No it probably cost me more like $2 million.’ A win would’ve gotten me into the Masters. My endorsement bonuses would have kicked in. A win opens so many doors. All of the sudden, I’d be in the world events like the SBS, with guaranteed money. There’s no price you could put on it. It cost me $400,000 on that Sunday. But how much did it really cost me? Who knows? Winning at the Verizon Heritage would’ve been awesome. Probably the hardest thing is knowing how much a win can possibly change your career."

Davis then sighs, and rattles off a few things off the top of his head.

"I mean, everyone knows Top 125 and you keep your tour card," he said. "But Top 70 gets you in all the invitationals. Mr. Palmer’s tournament. Mr. Nicklaus’ tournament. Great tournaments with limited fields. Top 50 and you’re guaranteed to play in every pro-am. That’s important to me because it means I can spend Monday and Tuesday with my family. Because the guys who are not in the pro am can’t play a practice round on Wednesday. They have to play Tuesday. That’s how important your spot on the money list is."

Damn, that’s rough. And in another twist of the knife, Davis carded two other second-place finishes, at the Crowne Plaza and the CIMB Asia Pacific Classic. That first win remains out there somewhere for Davis.

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Now this is how to do a promotion right. TaylorMade has affixed a mammoth, 88-foot-tall replica of its R11 driver to the right-field foul pole at Petco Park in San Diego.

It’s a bit of an optical illusion, as there’s not actually a club head on this monstrosity. But the driver itself is indeed in fair territory, which could lead to some interesting pinballing if a ballplayer happens to slice (ha!) a fly ball down the right-field line.

The all-aluminum driver weighs 950 pounds and took 250 man-hours to construct. And Natalie Gulbis will throw out the first pitch at Thursday’s Padres-Phillies game to close off the deal.

If a golfer — say, Dustin Johnson, who swings a smaller R11 — were to use this properly, he’d have to be 120 feet tall. And if said monstrous golfer took a professional-level swing with this "club," he could drive it more than 2 1/2 miles, TaylorMade engineers estimate. The club is part of a three-year advertising agreement; no word on whether we’ll all get free golf swag if somebody hits the club on the fly.

This isn’t the first time Petco has hosted a unique golf promotion; a couple years back, Briny Baird belted golf balls from the top of a nearby skyscraper for a Chinese food promotion. Next up: a green in center field, perhaps?

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Everything about the 2003 British Open seemed strange. Tiger Woods hitting his opening tee shot so far off the fairway that it resulted in a triple-bogey. Thomas Bjorn leaving a relatively easy bunker shot in the sand and costing him a shot at a major championship. And a guy named Ben Curtis, that not even true golf experts had ever heard of, rolling in a clutch par putt on the 72nd hole and eventually being handed the Claret Jug in his first ever appearance in a major championship.

The R&A is trying to do some things to keep the tournament this year at Royal St. George’s a little more sane. Officials have widened some fairways, including the first hole (above), and have added just 100 yards to the golf course since the last Open occurred in ’03, and although the par has been moved from a 71 to a 70 (the fourth hole will now be a par-4), it seems that the widened fairways will make a few of the holes more playable.

What do professional golfers really make of small changes to championship golf courses? Not a lot. Some will show up to practice rounds after changes just to get a feel for the difference, but a par-5 changing to a par-4 is only going to affect the final score relative to par, not really how players approach the hole.

Augusta National has done a ton of things to toughen the golf course since 1997, yet Charl Schwartzel‘s finishing score of 14-under was as good as any total at Augusta from 1976 until Tiger Woods tore it apart in ’97, so it really just matters on the conditions and the way the pins and such are set up.

So, a different look, but much of the same, and hopefully we won’t have search parties looking for golf balls on the first fairway as the groups waiting to tee off gets deeper and deeper.

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Let’s just throw this out there: getting old sucks. No matter whether you’re a golfer or an insurance adjuster, you lose a couple miles on your fastball every year you’re in middle age, and every year you have to compensate. That doesn’t make it any easier for the rest of us to watch, though.

One of golf’s uglier concessions to the dreaded march of time is the long putter, an abomination of golf equipment that the old codgers bust out once the yips and the years have taken their wrists. For years, it was accepted as the province of the Champions Tour, and you don’t question your elders, you just giggle a little behind their back.

But then Adam Scott went and nearly won the damn Masters with a long putter, and suddenly it got new legitimacy all over again. And now one of golf’s stalwarts, Ernie Els, is possibly giving it a go. (Note: Els is not in that picture.)

As Local Knowledge reports, Els had a belly putter, the Odyssey White Hot (like that soup you made for your grandfather! What, are you trying to scald him to death here?) in his bag for Wednesday’s pro-am. Els currently ranks 159th in putting on tour, a hundred-place dropoff from last year’s two-win season.

"I might have it in this week, but I’m not set on that yet," Els said. "I’m giving it a tryout … I think I might just need a different look and a different way of seeing the putts."

They say the eyes are the first to go. Good luck with the early bird special, Ernie.

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So in an attempt to inject a bit more life and interest into these early season tournaments, and because we’re both inveterate gamblers who are one bad card from being out on the streets, Shane Bacon and I are playing a golf version of a football suicide pool: We each pick one golfer per tournament and see how they do against each other, straight up. Victory over the other guy gets one point, victory in the tournament gets three points. And when we burn a golfer, he’s done for the year. This week: we hit the lowcountry for some high times at the Heritage.

Bacon: Who’s the man that likes this course and looks so good in that tartan jacket?! Badds, you’re damn right! I’m taking Aaron Baddeley, even after doing what I just did to the first part of this picks paragraph. He has won here before, always plays well at this course, and is having a solid year, with three top-10s. Also, it makes sense that one of the most fashionable players on tour would be rocking one of the most fashionable trophies in the game.

Busbee: I’m going for the proven pick here, taking Jim Furyk. He’s the defending champ here, and The Undertaker seems to kick it into a higher gear at Hilton Head. And he’ll have to, as he’s been stuck in neutral for most of the season. But familiar territory ought to break him out of his funk. Get on it, Jimmy!

Last week: At the Valero Texas Open, Busbee’s pick of Adam Scott came home even, eight strokes off the win, but that was good enough to beat Bacon’s Angel Cabrera, who followed up an exceptional Masters by missing the cut. Whoops.

Overall record: Busbee 10, Bacon 8.

Already Used: Busbee: Ernie Els, Steve Stricker, Chad Campbell, Bill Haas, Nick Watney, Tim Clark, Hunter Mahan, Graeme McDowell, Brian Gay, Matt Kuchar, KJ Choi, Webb Simpson, Jhonattan Vegas, Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott. Bacon: Bubba Watson, Jim Furyk, Steve Marino, Ben Crane, Jhonattan Vegas, Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell, Nick Watney, Padraig Harrington, Tiger Woods, Spencer Levin, Anthony Kim, Angel Cabrera.

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