Anyone in any doubt at all about how big a problem slow play is on the LPGA may have received a bit of a surprise at the weekend with Charley Hull’s comments after her final round at The ANNIKA.
Charley Hull went viral after labelling the pace of play ‘ridiculous’. The Englishwoman’s final round at Pelican Golf Club lasted the best part of six hours. Hull admitted that her solution would be to strip players of their tour cards should they be penalised on three occasions.
Certainly, the current penalties are not strong enough. Carlota Ciganda was fined $4,000 at The ANNIKA, but the Spaniard was able to play well enough to force her way into the top 60 for the CME Group Tour Championship this week. And last place in the season finale will take home $55,000.
Nelly Korda has also voiced her frustration with slow play. Korda was critical after finishing her third round in the darkness in Florida. And it seems that the comments of some of the tour’s biggest names have prompted the tour to look into taking action.
LPGA commissioner suggests plan to look into tackling slow play
Speaking ahead of the CME Group Tour Championship, LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan suggested that there are plans to look into changes over the winter.
“Yeah, I think it’s clearly an issue. I’ve heard that from players. Obviously our staff wants to speed up. I think we’re all in this together. So we’re going to form a pace of play committee in the off-season that includes all these stakeholders and put our best thinking forward to figure out how we can speed things up for our players’ performance and also for the fans,” she said.
“I think everybody is invested in this and have to be committed to making some change there. So, yeah, we totally recognize it. We hear it. We’re digging in and all we can do is try to find the best solutions moving forward. We like the passion of our players. They want this tour to be great. They want it to be better.
“We love hearing their feedback.”
The problem the LPGA have tackling pace of play issues
Of course, listening to feedback and implementing change are two very different things. Ultimately, if the LPGA felt that there was a simple fix for slow play, you would like to think that they would have already made that decision by now.
Perhaps it is a concern about consistency. It is going to be difficult to track every single player out on the course and then judge whether they have taken too long. While some players are synonymous with taking longer, there will be other players who endure difficult days at the office from time to time.
Simply monitoring the gaps between groups would surely not work, particularly if they did implement Hull’s idea.
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