Collin Morikawa has two-pronged slow-play solution that will benefit fans and PGA Tour

The PGA Tour’s slow-play problem has become nearly unbearable early this season. Final rounds during the American Express and Farmers Insurance Open both breached the five-plus hour mark and led to critical remarks from CBS’ Dottie Pepper and NBC’s Frank Nobilo.

Pace of play is one of several things pro golf must fix in order to adapt and survive in this attention economy. Baseball did so with the pitch clock and golf must follow suit.

So far top players are all over the board on what a slow-play solution might look like.

Rory McIlroy acknowledged that his solutions won’t be for everyone, but the world no. 3 believes paring down the number of players in the field and on tour will speed things up. Justin Thomas doesn’t think the idea of adding a TGL-esque shot clock will work. Lucas Glover rattled off a slow-play-fix manifesto on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio, which included getting rid of the AimPoint green-reading technique, giving every group its own bunker raker and getting the kids who serve as standard bearers out of the picture.

Two-time major winner Collin Morikawa offered his own take on the slow-play epidemic on Tuesday during his pre-tournament interview at the Genesis Invitational. He knows the Tour has an issue and that things must change to attract and retain viewers. He believes the Tour’s broadcast partners can help them out with the optics of the problem as they work to fix things on course.

“With the aspect of the fans, I mean, I realize they’re complaining about slow play, but if you showed them more shots, I don’t think they would complain about the slow play, right?” Morikawa said. “How would they know if it’s slow play or not if they’re seeing more shots in general in the window of the coverage?”

As for the Tour speeding up, Morikawa wants them to follow the LPGA’s lead and start laying down the law for the violators who move at a snail’s pace.

“But it is an issue on the Tour,” he said. “By no means is it something that should be looked over. It should be solved. Obviously, you see what the LPGA’s doing. You need to start fining people. Look, if I got slapped on the wrist and got a fine like I absolutely would not want to be fined again. It’s just like the NBA, like the technicals, right? Some guys are OK with getting fined every week. If guys are OK getting technicals and getting penalties out here on Tour because they’re slow, so be it. Something needs to happen to say like — and no one wants to be that Guinea pig, that first guy to do it and to get it, but it has to start somewhere.”

Last week at the Founders Cup, the LPGA sent players a memo outlining a harsher pace-of-play penalty that will take effect in March.

The current policy states: “A player in a group which is out of position may be penalized for unreasonable delay if: a. the player takes more than 60 seconds to play one shot, including putts, and/or b. the players exceeds the maximum allotted amount of time for the total strokes timed on a given hole by more than 10 seconds.”

Things will be more strict in the future.

With the new policy, players can be fined for going 1 to 5 seconds over their allotted time and will receive a one-shot penalty for going over by 6 to 15 seconds. If they go over 15 seconds, the penalty will be two strokes.

On the issue of AimPoint, Morikawa, who uses the technique, responded to Glover’s idea by suggesting the Tour ban long putters like the one the 2009 U.S. Open champion uses.

To Morikawa, the AimPoint issue speaks to a bigger issue regarding Tour players’ lack of awareness and respect for one another and the product. If you want to fix it, you have to make an example of the main offenders, not punish everyone by taking away something that isn’t the root cause of the problem.

“AimPoint does take longer if you’re not doing it properly, right, if you’re not doing it when other players are reading their putts,” Morikawa said. “I think there’s a respect issue. I think some players might get a little bit too close to the hole, and I get that. When you get too close to the hole when someone else is putting, yeah, like I don’t want my line and my putt to go over someone else’s foot and their marks. Are you going to tell other players not to walk around the hole when we’re picking up putts?

“From my perspective, AimPoint has 1,000 percent helped me. I listen to the announcers sometimes during play and they say why would you AimPoint this, this and that? It gets a basis of how I read a putt and how I start my lines. It’s just like reading something from behind the hole or behind the ball. That’s how I’m getting my general read for that. I don’t think people understand how AimPoint works to really say this is right or wrong. Does it slow down play? I think there are some players that maybe do it in the wrong spots. And sometimes, look, I’ll admit it, maybe I can’t get in when I want to so it adds a couple more seconds. But I know that and I’m aware of that. I think players need to be aware if they’re slow or not, right? Like let people know who is slow and do something about it, right?”

Morikawa’s solution is simple and should, in theory, lead to the quickest change in the pace of play. If you hit guys in their wallet or scorecard, they will get the message and change their ways.

But it’s up to the PGA Tour to decide it’s time to enforce a stricter policy.

We’re waiting.