It’s no secret that the PGA Tour needs to get players to play faster, but the question of “how?” is always the inhibiting factor to any real change.
While the PGA Tour adopted a new pace of play policy in 2020, it still hasn’t accessed a penalty for slow play since the 2017 Zurich Classic, which was the first in 20 years before that.
So how exactly should the PGA Tour enforce pace of play and combat slow play? Veteran CBS Broadcaster and 1991 Open Championship winner Ian Baker-Finch has some ideas.
On this week’s episode of GOLF Subpar, the Aussie was asked by co-hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz what he would like to change about golf on TV and Baker-Finch used it to tee off on the PGA Tour’s funereal pace of play at times.
“I’m not a big fan of slow play,” Baker-Finch started. “I’d try and find some way of speeding it up where you had to play in four hours and you really only had 30 seconds to play each shot and only you could read the putt. Things like that, that would just speed up the game. Because 5.5 hours is ridiculous, and I think it’s killing the game.”
Outrageous David Feherty stories? Ask his old pal, Ian Baker-Finch
Stoltz brought up CBS’s final broadcast of the 2024 season two weeks ago at the Wyndham Championship when the tournament had to play 36 holes on the final day and just barely (actually, it didn’t really) got it in.
The pace of play for each of the two rounds was five hours and 20 minutes.
Baker-Finch says the issue goes back before players make it to the PGA Tour because they are used to playing in five and a half hours in college and junior golf. But when it gets to the pro-level, Baker-Finch says the PGA Tour claims it’s done all it can without penalizing players.
“But if they say at the start of the week, the time par is 4:23 for a course in threesomes, adhere to the 4:23,” he said. “I don’t understand how 5:30 is OK?”
One other solution Baker-Finch proposes is to allow the use of distance-measuring devices. He says it’s an unpopular point of view, but Knost pointed to the recent U.S. Amateur where the pace of play was quite good throughout the event. Distance-measuring devices were allowed at the U.S. Am.
“I know a lot of the caddies think that I’m down on the caddies for that. No, not at all. I’m a fan,” Baker-Finch said. “It appears like over the last decade there’s more and more caddie conversations. You know, it seems to be a minute of discussion. before they even get to line up to the shot. And I think that’s something that, I don’t know how you change that rule or what you do, but that that would be something.”
For more from Baker-Finch, including some outrageous David Feherty tales, watch the full episode of Subpar below.
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