When it comes to burying their head in the sand, the PGA Tour seems to be at its best when it comes to the issue of tackling slow play.
It has been a frustrating start to the year for the PGA Tour, with The American Express receiving widespread criticism after the final round took the best part of six hours.
And it was a similar story at the Farmers Insurance Open, with the leaders taking more than three hours to complete the front nine on Saturday at Torrey Pines.
It has not helped that TGL has come along and shown that many of the world’s best players can indeed hit their shot within 40 seconds. Tiger Woods is the one player who has had a shot clock violation after taking too long over a putt.
Rory McIlroy asked what he would do about slow play
Certainly, events such as TGL and LIV Golf are more likely to appeal to fans who want to spend less time in front of the television watching the game. So it would be naive for the PGA Tour to not act.
Some think a shot clock would not work on the PGA Tour given how many people would be required to enforce it properly.
And ahead of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Rory McIlroy admitted that he is not sure how to tackle the problem, with his one potential solution likely to upset many on the tour.
“Jeez, I have no idea. I mean, you’ve got to – courses are becoming – like at like 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,” he said.
“I don’t know. I think like 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 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 p— some people off.
“I think as well, 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.
“I think as well 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 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.”
Why plenty will dislike McIlroy’s answer on tackling slow play
What is interesting is that McIlroy noted how unpopular smaller fields would be – a year before almost every single event on tour is going to see its field size reduced. Meanwhile, fewer tour cards are set to be handed out, with just 100 players automatically keeping their cards from 2026.
The PGA Tour changes have been criticised by many. But they will work a lot more if a lot more money is invested into the Korn Ferry Tour and the golfing world has a second tier full of recognisable names to the casual golf fan.
Unfortunately, the concern is that those at the top are simply looking out for themselves. And there does not even appear to be much confidence that smaller fields will address pace of play, with the slower players aware that they can potentially take longer.
To the outsider, it is hard to see why the PGA Tour simply cannot address slow play. They will surely suffer sooner or later if the problem persists.
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