Our latest roundup of new golf equipment arriving in pro shops leads off with a pair of putters: the Odyssey Flip Face and Nike Method Midnight. The Flip Face is as it sounds - the golfer can rotate the putter face end-over-end to switch to a different face insert material.

The gallery also includes irons, a remote-control cart for walkers, outerwear and apparel, plus a golf rules app based on some of the best "plain English" books about the golf rules.

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Should the PGA Tour crack down on slow play? Kevin Na's glacial pace at The Players Championship has set a lot of tongues wagging on the issue. Of course, Na has been a very slow player for years, as have quite a few other tour members.

The tour has slow play rules in place already that would probably speed up play if they were simply enforced - because enforcing them would lead to penalty strokes. As it stands, the PGA Tour hasn't assessed a penalty stroke to a player because of slow play in 20 years.

Is an individual golfer's pace of play even the main issue in overlong rounds? In comments made prior to The Players Championship, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said no. Finchem said the issue is one of logistics: With 150-plus player fields, there are inevitable bottleneck areas on every golf course where play is going to back up.

We see that on the courses we play on busy days. Those par-5s where players wait to have a go at the green in two. On particularly busy days, just about any par-3. Those are places where recreational golfers on the local course will have to wait on a busy day, and they are places where the pros in a large field are going to wait, too. Finchem claimed that reducing field size to, say, 120 players, would solve the issue. But we all know there's zero chance of that happening (and Finchem wasn't proposing it, merely claiming field size and course logistics play a larger role in long tour rounds than the pace of individual golfers). But we've also all seen very long rounds in short-field pro tournaments, and "bottlenecking" can't explain 6-hour matches at the Ryder Cup.

In my opinion, absolutely nothing will be done about slow play on the PGA Tour until or unless one thing happens: until or unless the television networks state, or the tour comes to believe, that PGA Tour telecasts will be worth less money unless pace of play improves. Otherwise, there are too many players - probably a majority - who think, "I'm playing for millions of dollars, I'll take as long on a shot as I need."

Unless it starts to hit players and the tour in the pocketbook, slow play in tour events will be around forever. And so will complaining about slow play in tour events.

See also:
PGA Tour slow play policy
How recreational golfers can avoid slow play

This week in golf features the HP Byron Nelson Championship on the PGA Tour, plus match play tournaments on both the European and LPGA tours.

On the LPGA Tour, it's the Sybase Match Play Championship, where the defending champion is Suzann Pettersen.

On the Euro Tour, it's the Volvo World Match Play Championship, a tournament that started as a showcase for golfers represented by a single agent. Luckily for fans, that agent represented the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

The defending champ is Ian Poulter, and others in the 24-man field include Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Justin Rose and Charl Schwartzel. The format groups those players into threes, and each group plays round-robin. The top two in each group advance to the round of 16, where 18-hole knockout matches continue until a winner is crowned.

And on the PGA Tour, it's a quick turnaround for Players Championship winner Matt Kuchar, who headlines the Nelson field. If you want to have another look at Kevin Na's unusual waggling routine, you'll have to wait: he's not here. (But, then, we're used to waiting on Na.) The defending champ is Keegan Bradley, and others in the field include Jason Day, Jason Dufner, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen, Adam Scott and Vijay Singh.

Kevin Na is driving the TV announcers and possibly his playing partners to distraction during the 2012 Players Championship with his very unusual start-and-stop-and-back-away-and-repeat pre-swing waggling. Sometimes, that waggling results in Na swinging through the ball, but lifting the clubhead up in order to miss the ball. Then he re-sets and starts (and sometimes stops) the process again.

It's generating quite a bit of discussion, especially given the fact that Na has been at or near the top of the leaderboard all week.

Should Na be counting those "whiffs" - the occasions he swings over the ball - as strokes? If not, why not? That's a question we've addressed before in one of our Rules FAQs. Check out "Does a whiff count as a stroke?" for the explanation of why Na hasn't been charged with strokes on those swing-overs.

See also:
More Rules FAQ