The time has come for the PGA Tour to be proactive about how long it takes to play tournament golf.
There are generous pace-of-play policies in place, the emotional subject has reached a boiling point again and there is increasing evidence that doing nothing substantive is not an option.
The world has changed. Attention spans are shorter. Options are greater.
It doesn’t take declining television ratings to demonstrate that something needs to be done. Players (most of them anyway) know it. Broadcasters talk about it. Administrators know it.
Is this the moment?
“It has to be,” said Lucas Glover, among the tour’s most vocal proponents of pushing and enforcing pace-of-play guidelines.
“Our numbers are down. There are too many things fans can do instead of coming to a golf tournament. The audience we need to capture doesn’t have time to sit around and stand around to watch us sit around and stand around.”
A group of PGA Tour leaders teased the idea of impending change during a roundtable discussion with media members at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and reiterated an earlier message from commissioner Jay Monahan that “everything is on the table.”
“This isn’t a new problem, this has been around forever, but slow play was also around when people seemingly loved golf. I don’t know what the answer is.”
Rory McIlroy
“It’s a moment here,” said Tyler Dennis, the tour’s chief competition officer.
When the final threesome in the American Express event took approximately five and a half hours to play their final round in ideal conditions in January (contributing to a ratings drop of nearly 50 percent from 2024), the alarm bells sounded again and they haven’t quit ringing.
Slow players impact faster players who are forced to wait. If every golfer played at Ludvig Åberg’s pace, there might not be a pace-of-play issue.
Just because it’s been an issue since before Jack Nicklaus (who once was penalized two strokes for slow play in the Portland Open) doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be done about it.
To be fair, pace of play isn’t always a concern, but it’s not getting any better. Playing Torrey Pines’ South Course in cold, windy conditions is never going to produce quick rounds. But places like Harbour Town and Colonial – where greens and tees are close and the yardage isn’t extreme – produce rounds under four hours on the weekends.
The issue also isn’t limited to the on-site experience where fans often wait with the players. Energizing the pace of television broadcasts was a priority according to approximately 50,000 fans who participated in the tour’s Fan Forward initiative.
They made it clear they want to see more full shots and fewer short putts. Focusing on the cut line on Friday was encouraged. As were more walk-and-talks with players during rounds without slowing play.
The PGA Tour’s pace-of-play policy was enacted in 1994 and when Glen Day (nicknamed “All Day” because he was so slow) was dinged a one-stroke penalty in 1995, it was the last time the tour applied a stroke penalty to a player.
It has happened on rare occasions in majors since, but otherwise there have been warnings and some fines, which matter less in this day when there is so much money available to players.
While acknowledging pace of play is a problem, the solution might not be as simple as mounting a shot clock on every hole and giving players 40 seconds to play. It works in TGL events but its practicality in PGA Tour events could be a challenge, not to mention distracting.
Baseball’s use of a pitch clock shortened games and increased interest. Having Theo Epstein, who helped drive the baseball change, as a key member of Fenway Sports Group within the Strategic Sports Group that has agreed to invest up to $3 billion in PGA Tour Enterprises, suggests a clock might be considered.
At the heart of the issue, though, is making the game better for everyone at a critical time.
According to PGA Tour ShotLink data gathered over years, it takes tour players an average of 38 seconds to play a shot, within the guidelines in the Rules of Golf, which suggest, but don’t mandate, pace-of-play rules.
In the same way it’s not one player who slows down the golf course (though it’s easy to point to a few who are chronically deliberate), it’s not one factor that can turn 18 holes into a long slog.
Larger fields create time problems. More difficult course setups contribute. The process of potentially penalizing players isn’t severe enough.
Most players can reach every par-5 in two. Drivable par-4s slow the pace. Faster green speeds cause players to take more time on the greens.
There is, however, little incentive for slow players to change their ways. Some have budgeted fines into their yearly planning.
“This isn’t a new problem, this has been around forever, but slow play was also around when people seemingly loved golf. I don’t know what the answer is. There’s a lot of different answers, but not every answer is going to make everyone happy,” Rory McIlroy said.
When the tour announced last year that it would reduce field sizes in 2026, among the reasons given was to improve pace of play. Critics contend pace of play can be addressed without the significant reduction in playing opportunities.
“The policy is the issue,” Glover said. “It’s too hard to get penalized.”
“We do have our own version of a shot clock right now, and … it’s brought about a change in behavior, which we really like to see.”
Gary Young, PGA Tour vice president for rules and competitions
It works this way:
The tour has a pace-of-play scorecard for each event and when players or groups fall behind, they receive a warning and have two holes to catch up. If they remain behind, they are told they are being timed. Players who violate the time guidelines thereafter are given a bad time with no penalty. Two bad times in a round result in a one-stroke penalty.
The first nine times a player is timed through the year result in no fines. If a player is timed 10 times, he is fined $50,000 with each additional timing costing another $5,000.
Proponents for improving pace of play argue that adding strokes to player’s score – perhaps after getting one warning that they are too slow – would be more effective, because a penalty would cost them money and valuable FedEx Cup points.
“We do have our own version of a shot clock right now, and … it’s brought about a change in behavior, which we really like to see. We have sat down with the players to review with them their average shot time on tee shots, approach shots, putts, how they can improve,” said Gary Young, the tour’s senior vice president for rules and competitions and the person charged with keeping players moving.
“I think everyone that watches can say that there are certain players whose routines are longer than they need to be and these guys are admitting that. At a point in time right now where they’re admitting it and we’re going to try to address that.”
Among the tour’s considerations are making public where tour players rank in its “average stroke time” list, publicly identifying the fastest and the slowest. Shame can be a great motivator. Making public any fines dispensed is also under consideration.
There are some practical enhancements to improve the pace of play. Glover has advocated for having drop areas on every hole near grandstands to alleviate the time needed for officials to determine drop sites.
The tour is utilizing video feeds into its new production headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with officials there communicating with on-site officials to make quicker decisions. Structures that traditionally come into play more often can be identified and relocated based on data the tour has accumulated.
Another consideration is allowing players to use distance-measuring devices in tournament play. They have been tried on the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Champions and used in recent PGA Championships and the tour has announced it will experiment with their use in select tournaments this year.
“Why not? We’re hearing it from our fans. They use them day in and day out; why would we hold a resource back from players that could potentially help them, especially for off‑line shots, getting a quick reference point,” Young said.
The devices have been used in the PGA Championship, the Senior PGA Championship and the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship for several years though there is no specific data about how much time may be saved by using them.
“It has certainly helped a little bit when the ball goes off line and outside the ropes,” said Kerry Haigh, chief championship officer for the PGA of America. “But they all still go through their (measuring) processes.”
As for AimPoint, the much-maligned greens-reading process in which players use their feet to determine slope and break, some players are quicker in employing the method than others. When Glover called for it to be banned on his SiriusXM PGA Tour radio show recently, some players approached him to express their disagreement.
Some players do it quickly. It’s the slowest ones who have made AimPoint a flash point in the slow-play argument. Policing it would fall under the broader goal of more aggressively enforcing any changes to the pace-of-play policy.
The reasons to make changes are there. The ratings. The complaints. The perception.
Implementing changes won’t turn five-hour rounds into four-hour rounds but saving 20-30 minutes would make a difference for everyone.
“Players understand right now what the challenges are when we start talking about pace of play, and they’re coming to us,” said Young, who added that Sam Burns, Jhonattan Vegas and Adam Schenk are part of a group of players focusing on pace-of-play changes.
“It’s actually a great time right now to walk around and hear so many of them coming to us with their view of where the problems are, how we should address them, so this working group that’s been developed is going to be very important over the course of the coming months to really address this issue.”
Doing nothing at this point should not be an option.
E-MAIL RON
Top: (From left) Tony Finau, Max Homa and Sahith Theegala wait to play their tee shots on the 18th hole during the second round of The Sentry in January.
Maddie Meyer, Getty Images