LPGA pro faces slow-play accusations (again) after recent win

LPGA veteran Carlota Ciganda captured her eighth-career Ladies European Tour victory on Sunday in her home country of Spain. But an issue that has dogged the Spanish pro reared its head again during her win: slow-play accusations.

Ciganda shot a one-under 71 on Sunday to secure her W at the Andalucía Costa del Sol Open de España, but it didn’t come without difficulty, as she saw a large 54-hole lead nearly slip away.

“It wasn’t easy, sometimes when you have a four-shot lead it’s not easy,” Ciganda said after the round. “I haven’t been up there in a while, so I had some adrenaline going on and started with a couple of bogeys.”

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The European Solheim Cup star made a clutch birdie at 17 to give herself a two-shot lead heading to the last, where she made another bogey to just hang on for a one-shot victory.

“I fought really hard, I am a fighter,” Ciganda said of her round, “I try to give my 100% every time I play golf and that’s what I tried to do. It was a good day for me.”

But following her win, a video surfaced on X posted by @Golfingbrock of Ciganda hitting her approach shot on the par-4 15th hole at Real Club Guadalhorce Golf.

The video begins with her playing partner’s shot, then shows the entire sequence of Ciganda preparing to hit her shot, along with a time clock in the corner. From the moment her playing partner’s ball comes to rest to when Ciganda finally hits her shot, approximately 1 minutes and 20 seconds pass.

On the LPGA and PGA tours, players are allotted only 40 seconds to hit a shot. In specific scenarios, PGA Tour players are given an extra 20 seconds to hit. Ciganda’s time well exceeded those marks.

But Ciganda was not penalized for slow play. In a response to the original post, Monday Q Info reported that in Saturday’s third round Ciganda was put on the clock after receiving a bad time, but she also was not penalized for that offense. Given that her margin of victory was one shot, a hypothetical stroke-penalty for pace of play would have had dramatic ramifications for the tournament.

This isn’t the first time Ciganda avoided a stroke-penalty for slow play, but the last time ended in a disqualification.

At the 2023 Evian Championship, an LPGA major, Ciganda was assessed a two-stroke penalty on the 9th hole of the second round after her group was put on the clock and then she exceeded her allowed time to play.

On the cut line at the time, Ciganda appealed the penalty in the scoring tent, but when LPGA officials denied her appeal, she refused to add the penalty strokes to her score. As a result, she was disqualified under Rule 3.3b(3) for returning a score lower than her actual score.

And Ciganda’s history with slow play offenses doesn’t stop there. At the LPGA’s 2021 Bank of Hope Match Play event, Ciganda seemingly defeated Sarah Schmelzel 1 up in their match by winning the 18th hole. But after the final putt dropped, Ciganda was assessed a general slow-play penalty, which in match play results in the loss of the hole.

And just like that, Ciganda went from match winner to match loser.

“I know I have to improve, and I’ll try to do that next year,” Ciganda told Golfweek of her pace of play at The Annika last month. “I don’t think people understand how tough golf can be … mentally it’s a lot tougher than what people think. Golfers just drink some beers and play some golf, and we do this for a living. A lot goes through in your mind.”

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Slow play was a hot topic late in the 2024 LPGA season. After enduring a sluggish pace at The Annika event in mid-November, LPGA pro Charley Hull sounded off on the issue.

“It’s ridiculous and I feel sorry for the fans how slow it is out there,” Hull said. “We were out there for five hours and 40 minutes yesterday. We play in a four-ball at home on a hard golf course and we’re round in three and a half, four hours. It is pretty crazy.”

Hull shared her “ruthless” solution to the problem, involving two-stroke penalties for every offense and a loss of a Tour card for any player with three offenses.

Coincidentally, at the same tournament Ciganda was reportedly hit with a $4,000 fine for slow play.

While many players shared their opinions on slow play at the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, not everyone shares Hull’s anger. Angel Yin spoke to GOLF’s Nick Piastowski before the event, and she admitted pace of play has at least improved since she first came on tour.

“If I have to really say, over the years I’ve been on tour, I think it was worse before. It was worse before, we were waiting more, and I think now we have a good mixture of fast players and then that’s when the slow players really start showing up. Because the majority of the girls are playing much faster, where you cannot be really too slow or then you start getting behind,” Yin said.

With the news that LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan will step down from her post in January, one would assume pace of play will be near the top of the new commish’s agenda.