Golf is a game that has many a problem in both the men’s and women’s game but when it comes to the LPGA Tour, there seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to pace of play.
This week has seen the KPMG PGA Championship take place at Fields Ranch East and while there has been some superb golf on display, slow play issues have once again riddled the tournament.
Once again, Lexi Thompson was forced to speak on the matter after coming under scrutiny for being on the slow side yet again in her career.
It’s not the first time Thompson has been a party to woefully slow play on the tour either.
- READ MORE: Brandel Chamblee ‘just loved’ one thing new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said when asked about LIV Golf
As we know, this age old argument spreads across both the PGA and LPGA Tours, while LIV Golf don’t seem to have issues thanks to their shotgun starts.
However, just when things seemed to have died down a touch on the slow play front, the LPGA has once again been exposed this week, with golden child and world number one Nelly Korda being front and centre of matters.
How Nelly Korda helped show up the LPGA’s major pace of play problem
Golf is a sport where it takes a long time, it’s just how it goes. Anything around four to five hours can be commonplace, albeit the five hour mark is certainly pushing things in terms of being slow.
This weekend, then, we’ve seen a new extreme come along as Nelly Korda’s group finished their 18 holes in round three in around the six hour mark.
That ranks as one of the longest rounds of 18 holes in history, and certainly is the longest in 2025 across all the tours around the world.
Korda was fuming with the timings as well.
“I think we played a two ball in like six hours,” Korda complained. “That’s just a little ridiculous, but what can you do? I just told myself to be patient.”
It should be noted that the conditions at Fields Ranch have played into the hands of slow play, and this is not all on the players.
However, certain players are not helping, and at some point, serious action needs to be taken.
What LPGA players have said about solving slow play
This conversation reared its head in 2024 as well as this season and it’s not going away, especially after the KPMG this week.
One of the biggest complainants of slow play has been English golfer, Charley Hull.
Hull has been outspoken in her views on how to resolve the issue, even suggesting cards be taken off players who persistently breach the rules.
“It was crazy. I’m quite ruthless, but I said, listen, if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a tee shot penalty, if you have three of them you lose your Tour card instantly. I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up and they won’t want to lose their Tour card,” she said back in 2024.
Indeed, even Nelly Korda has weighed in as well after she suffered with bad light at the 2024 ANNIKA to cost herself a shot at winning.
“It’s kind of hard when you don’t really see. I think it was a little bit of poor planning by starting so late for us,” she said.
“Whenever you’re sitting on 18 and the sun is already down, I mean, it’s never nice. And especially with how slick these greens are and you can’t properly see, I mean, obviously two factors that go into that too. At the end of the day I’m the one that missed it, so yeah.”
Quite what the solution over the long-term will be, remains to be seen. But slow play continues to plague golf and in a nutshell, it has to be resolved.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
