This new study suggests Bryson DeChambeau is a seriously slow player

Golf’s history — and its day-to-day — is littered with consternation over pace of play.

There are few things more frustrating in golf than the annoyance of standing on the tee box as the group in front takes extra practice swings, extra time over putts and shanks extra balls into the woods.

Undeniably, certain Tour players are slower than others. They plod over the ball longer, question club choices, draw out conversations with their caddies, lament their lie.

Recently, the USGA implemented a new rule to, ideally, codify faster pace on Tour. The rule states that “a player should make a stroke in no more than 40 seconds (and usually in less time).”

Still, there’s little empirical data available as it pertains to this widespread problem. And the rule is loosely, if ever, enforced. But at last week’s U.S. Open, Andy Johnson over at The Fried Egg followed Bryson DeChambeau, Kevin Kisner and Justin Thomas, putting a clock to their every shot. His results provide an eye-opening dichotomy between one of the fastest players on Tour (Kisner) and one of the slowest (DeChambeau).

DeChambeau — who finished tied for 35th at one over par — averaged 63.3 second between shots (not including tap-ins). This laborious pace dropped to a glacial 93.3 seconds when he was hitting first in his group.

Kisner, on the other hand, took less than half as long (31.4 seconds) than DeChambeau between shots on average. When he hit last in the group, Kisner averaged just 17.1 seconds to take his shot.

Thomas largely fell in the middle of the two polar opposites.

This new data makes a few points clearer as it comes to the never-ending pace-of-play predicament. For one, even if two players play relatively fast, the slow third player will weigh the whole group down. More data, with a larger sample size, would help illuminate some of the slower players — and hopefully encourage faster play.

Most obviously, though: Bryson DeChambeau should probably pick up the pace.

You can read the entire Fried Egg study here.