Slow play, at any level of golf, can be hugely frustrating. It negatively impacts both scores and overall experience.
Slow play has always been a source of contention, and several high-profile professionals have spoken about the issue.
Midway through the 2024 Masters, Rory McIlroy said: “It felt long, yeah. Especially that 11th hole, as it felt like it took an hour to play that hole. It was stop and start, hard to get into a rhythm with the conditions and obviously how slow the play was as well.”
Despite the concern, the PGA Tour appears reluctant to combat the problem. Only three players have been penalised for slow play since 1995, the last being in 2011.
Recently, Matt Fitzpatrick took aim at the PGA Tour, claiming slow play never gets dealt with, and it’s fair to say the Englishman has a point.
What Brooks Koepka did at the 2023 PGA Championship to combat slow play
LIV Golf star Brooks Koepka is a notoriously fast player, and the American is never afraid to let his thoughts on slow play be known.
During the final round of the 2023 Masters, Koepka didn’t hold back when assessing the group in front of himself and Jon Rahm.
“Yeah, the group in front of us was brutally slow,” he said about Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland. “Jon went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”
Concerned about slow play ahead of the 2023 PGA Championship, Koepka devised a cunning plan to slow his own group down and, in turn, ease his frustrations. Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington thought the move was “genius.”
“The reason I bring up the 2023 Masters is that Brooks was in the last group, and he was very frustrated with that delay of 20 minutes,” Harrington said in a recent YouTube video.
“That’s not a slow play issue; that’s a golf course issue in terms of the flow of the course. He did the most genius golf move I have ever seen when it came to the PGA Championship at Oak Hill.
“He was very worried about the pace of play that he was going to play faster and be held up a lot, so he slowed his group down by marking his tap in putts.”
He added: “So every time he had a tap in putt, he marked it, let the other guy putt, then came back over and putt. Maybe it’s 30 seconds or 45 seconds. But the worst thing a fast player can do is play slowly, just as a. slow player, it’s really difficult for him to play fast, so they have to find different ways. Brooks, genius, I was so impressed.”
Koepka would end up keeping his frustrations in check and won his fifth major championship title at Oak Hill Country Club.
What the PGA Tour are doing to combat slow play?
Amazingly, the PGA Tour’s response to the slow play issue is to decrease the fines handed out for slow play and afford players more time to deliberate shots.
Those on the PGA Tour only need to look at LIV Golf and the example set by the breakaway league.
The PIF-backed venture has handed out the same amount of penalties in its two-year existence as the PGA Tour has done in the past 30.
Rectifying the slow play problem would be a massive step forward for the PGA Tour, which is by no means the most popular organisation at present.
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