Slow-play problems have once again been a key talking point on the PGA Tour. At the American Express last month, the final group played in 5 hours, 39 minutes. A week later at the Farmers Insurance Open the final grouping got around in 5 hours, 20 minutes, leading to CBS on-course reporter Dottie Pepper’s viral critique of the sluggish pace.
So, what’s the solution?
“It’s not going to be fixed,” said Ryan Palmer, a four-time PGA Tour winner on this week’s episode of GOLF’S Subpar podcast. “The guys are playing for a lot of money, for points. And it’s going to be even more pressure now to finish top 100 with the amount of money being played for. They fine you for slow play, but at the end of the day nobody cares about the fines. They are going to pay them and move on; that’s not going to bother anybody. You want guys to play fast? Strokes.”
Hoffman’s comment about the top 100 refers to the Tour’s recent change — which will got into effect next season — where the number of fully-exempt players will shrink from 125 to 100.
“It’s hard,” Palmer said. “It’s a grind. Now they are playing for 100 cards. I think guys are going to play slower because of that reason.”
In the wake of Pepper’s comments, PGA Tour veteran Charley Hoffman sent a memo to Tour members, in which one section addressed the need to be ready when it’s their turn to play. Palmer reiterated this point on the podcast.
“I haven’t been the fastest in the last few years, I guess I’m getting older and slower, but you watch guys and they’re not ready,” Palmer said. “Once it’s their turn, then they start talking about it. Half the time I got a club in my hand waiting to go.
“The other thing that could speed it up is I think AimPoint is awful,” he continued. “I think that is No. 1 as far as on greens, straddling the line, back and forth, the caddie straddling the line — they are taking over a minute and half, a minute to putt.”
(This, too, might sound familiar. Last week, former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover said AimPoint should be “banned” for its affect on slow play, which led to Collin Morikawa, an AimPoint user, offering his rebuttal.)
Rory McIlroy even unloaded on the complex issue during his Genesis Invitational press conference on Wednesday, saying, sure, it was slower at Torrey Pines for the Farmers due to tricky conditions of high winds and fast greens, yet, “then you have Pebble last week and CBS was complaining that we finished 30 minutes early,” he said. “Like, what do you want?
“You need to understand that golf at the highest level takes a while,” he continued. “But there’s certainly some things we can do to speed it up, but whether that takes a five and a half hour round to a five hour and 15 round, I don’t think it’s going to make such an astonishing change that, I think that’s always just going to be a stick to beat golf with basically.”
