Rory McIlroy knows it’s a problem.
But that doesn’t mean the four-time major winner has a magic bullet to fix the slow-play issue that is plaguing the PGA Tour.
The pace-of-play issue has been put under the microscope early in the PGA Tour season due to final-round slogs at the American Express and Farmers Insurance Open. On Sunday at the American Express, it took the final group five hours and 39 minutes to finish 18 holes. That was just one hour less than it took the NFL to conduct two playoff games. One week later, it took eventual champion Harris English and his group three hours to play nine holes at a spicy Torrey Pines. The slow play led to criticism from CBS on-course reporter Dottie Pepper, who called for the players to have “respect” for the fans, broadcast, and their fellow players.
Attention is currency in today’s overcrowded social media world, and golf, specifically the PGA Tour, needs to find a way to make professional golf more interesting to viewers who love the game but cannot or don’t want to watch six-hour rounds every week. Other sports, like baseball, have adapted to make the game quicker and more appealing to a broader audience.
But golf has always had four- and five-hour rounds, especially on harder courses with difficult conditions.
Justin Thomas knows that fans want quicker rounds but also want to watch the PGA Tour’s best play tougher courses. Those two desires are diametrically opposed.
McIlroy understands the need for the PGA Tour to adapt and fix its glacial pace. He has ideas on how to improve things. But he also understands that the potential answers will not be universally popular with the tour membership and might not make much of a difference.
“Jeez, I have no idea,” McIlroy said Tuesday during his pre-tournament press conference at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am when asked about how to fix slow play. “Curses are becoming — at Torrey Pines last week, courses are becoming more difficult. You have those wind speeds combined with the green speeds. Even over a two-footer you’re wanting to mark it and reset and concentrate over it and whatever.
“This isn’t a new problem. This has been around forever, but slow play was also around when people seemingly loved golf. I don’t know what the answer is. There’s a lot of different answers, but not every answer is going to — is not going to make everyone happy. I could say smaller fields. Smaller fields, smaller fields would help pace of play, but that takes away playing opportunities from people, and that’s going to piss some people off. The other thing is when we play in this time of the year, the tee times have to be a little bit tighter together so that they can get everyone through with daylight and everything. If you could be able to space the tee times out a little bit more, that would hopefully make things flow a little bit better. Nowadays, most people go for par 5s in two, so you’ve got to wait on that. You’ve got longer par 3s. There’s a lot of different things that go into it. I don’t know. It seems like it’s — you can maybe improve it by 15 or 20 minutes, but that’s still a five-and-a-half hour round into a five-hour and 15 round, so is that really improving it enough to make a huge change? I don’t know.”
McIlroy and Tiger Woods are co-founders of the TGL simulator golf league. While the start-up venture has had its ups and downs early on — Monday night’s match featuring Woods and McIlroy was its best night yet — the shot clock aspect of the league has drawn near-unanimous praise.
The idea of imposing a shot clock on the PGA Tour has become a topic of conversation, but McIlroy isn’t sure it’s a viable option. The clock itself will not solve problems if the PGA Tour doesn’t consistently enforce it.
“The MLB introduced a pitch clock at the start of last season, and that seemed to work pretty well,” McIlroy said. “It’s going to be — you can try to introduce it, but how’s it governed, that’s a very hard thing to do for every single group on the golf course. Golf is — there’s a lot of things about golf that are very different than other sports, but I think that’s what makes it unique. I don’t think we should try to dumb down golf to appeal to more people. Golf is golf at the end of the day. It’s been this way for hundreds of years.”
The simplest solution would be for the PGA Tour to start stroking players who cause their groups to fall behind. If you hit players on their scorecards and, therefore, their wallets, some urgency will naturally arrive, which should help improve the PGA Tour’s dipping ratings.
McIlroy does have a solution to golf’s ratings fog. If you have more compelling tournaments with the best players in the world going head-to-head on iconic golf courses, the product will be better, and the other issues fade into the background.
“I really like the way golf is, and I think a lot of other people do, too,” McIlroy said. “I still understand the critiques of how the entertainment product could get better. It’s a multifaceted thing and I think pace of play is one thing. Player accessibility and all that, that’s what we’re talking about, but it takes a while to put that sort of ball into motion. These are all the things that have been getting kicked around.
“But like first and foremost we’re professional golfers, we want to go out there and shoot the best score possible that we can and try to beat each other. You know, hopefully people find that entertaining, and if not, then I don’t know what to tell them.”
McIlroy and the PGA Tour’s best hope to put on a good show — hopefully with some cooperation from the weather — this week at the first Signature Event of the season.
A Sunday showdown between McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Ludvig Aberg, and others at the iconic Pebble Beach would go a long way toward silencing the growing critiques of the PGA Tour after a slow start to the season.