PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Dottie Pepper actually wasn’t the primary to say it, however her phrases on the CBS broadcast at Torrey Pines resonated as gamers completed the ultimate spherical Saturday in 5 hours and 31 minutes. The remarks and the exhaustion in her voice carried weight. Viewers felt seen.
“I feel we’re beginning to want a brand new phrase to speak about this pace-of-play situation, and it’s ‘respect’ — to your fellow opponents, for the followers, for broadcasts, for all of it. It’s simply bought to get higher,” Pepper stated, strolling as a roving commentator throughout the Farmers Insurance coverage Open in her acquainted function.
There all the time appears to be an inflection level every skilled golf season, throughout which the sluggish play downside dominates the discourse on the PGA Tour. The difficulty isn’t a brand new one. It’s an age-old downside within the professional sport. Everybody is aware of it: Golf can crawl.
However at a time when the skilled sport is already in flux in some ways, a distinct drive is rising behind the controversy. There’s a brand new stress — one between the participant and the viewer — that’s including a layer to the sluggish play dialogue. However maybe that stress could make the answer to the issue clearer than ever.
Golf audiences are watching TGL’s shot-clock tick down from 40 to zero on Monday and Tuesday nights in prime time, with a pulsing heartbeat sound including to the impact. That very same viewer then activates their TV on Sunday to event leaders teeing off at 2 p.m., and their 7 p.m. dinner reservation is instantly in jeopardy.
.@Dottie_pepper PREACH 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 pic.twitter.com/BebcTDyHP7
— Joseph LaMagna (@JosephLaMagna) January 25, 2025
When Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele and Matt Fitzpatrick — three-quarters of New York Golf Membership — have been requested about which factor of TGL they’d prefer to see applied in professional golf, they virtually recited the phrases “shot clock” in unison. They’re not alone. Gamers are largely unhappy with the tempo on tour.
However on the similar time, PGA Tour execs are realists. They’re conscious of the intricacies of enjoying at an elite degree, and so they’re fast to come back to its protection. Enjoying in 40 mph winds on an almost 8,000-yard Torrey Pines and strolling off the course to see golf followers criticizing sluggish play elicits an instinctual response.
“They need golf to be as exhausting as attainable for us, however then they need us to play as fast as we will. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to have each,” Shane Lowry stated in between pictures on the driving vary forward of this week’s AT&T Pebble Seashore Professional-Am.
Gamers need issues to start out shifting, however in addition they need PGA Tour followers to know there’s extra to this situation than “hurry up and play quicker.” Yardages are being pushed to their limits to mitigate distance positive aspects on tour, making lengthy programs with agency and quick situations, and smaller greens a necessity for increased scores. Threesomes and split-tees on Sundays are required throughout the winter with restricted daylight. PGA Tour gamers are hitting pictures for his or her livelihoods. They’re educated to emphasise their pre-shot routines to really feel dedicated to each shot. All of those elements individually, not to mention the mixture of all of them directly, will decelerate professional golf. So, what’s the answer? The MLB applied a pitch clock in 2023. Can TGL, which has a 40-second shot clock that mirrors the USGA coverage on tempo of play, encourage golf to do the identical?
“The individuals which might be evaluating TGL and the shot clocks, that’s ridiculous,” Justin Thomas says. “There’s no part to TGL that requires the identical quantity of thought. If you’re actually taking a look at a display screen, you’ve the gap; you don’t need to stroll any yardages. Yeah, it’s essential and we need to win, however (the PGA Tour) is our job. I hate the comparability in that side. I do suppose one thing must get a bit bit higher, but it surely’s additionally a really exhausting factor to do.”
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Shot clock apart, the colossal mission of addressing sluggish play in an actual approach appears to be underway with a brand new sense of urgency, and it’s coming from throughout the PGA Tour. The tour’s latest analysis effort — dubbed “Fan Ahead” — factors to a quicker tempo of play as one of many two modifications followers are demanding, the opposite being broadcast enhancements. Tour management shared the preliminary outcomes of that analysis, in addition to ongoing experimentation for how you can method the tempo downside, with the media Wednesday at Pebble Seashore.
Just a few key factors stood out: The tour will start testing how using rangefinders can have an effect on tempo of play on the PGA Tour in 2025, at just a few particular occasions — April’s Zurich Basic was thrown out as a risk. The concept is that gamers who’re out of place would possibly be capable of use distance measuring gadgets to get again into the movement of the opening faster, reasonably than making a backup on the course.
There’s additionally an lively dialogue round the potential for disclosing every participant’s common stroke time and growing transparency round sluggish play fines — public shaming, if you’ll.
“Historically, that’s not been one thing we’ve performed, however that’s one thing that we’re going to take a tough have a look at,” PGA Tour chief competitions officer Tyler Dennis stated.
It’s one thing, tour officers famous, not unusual with different professional sports activities, however golfers have loved secrecy round fines. A committee of three gamers — Sam Burns, Jhonattan Vegas and Adam Schenk — has been assigned to deal with the sluggish play situation.
Rangefinders might be a part of the answer to rushing up play. (Patrick Smith / Getty Pictures)
The concept is that these potential developments may work in live performance with a change that’s already set to take impact in 2026: Subject sizes on the PGA Tour will shrink throughout the board, within the hopes that on-course visitors will reduce. The PGA Tour is adamant that gamers are shopping for in to progress on the sluggish play entrance like they’ve by no means seen earlier than.
“There are gamers whose routines are longer than they have to be,” Gary Younger, SVP of guidelines and competitors, says. “We’re on the time limit the place guys are admitting that.”
Stated Wyndham Clark: “I wouldn’t be against a shot clock; I’m a quick participant. I might love if the tour did ahead considering as a substitute of some reactive considering and stated, ‘ what, let’s attempt to be one of the best we will within the subsequent 10, 20 years, and let’s do one thing distinctive and new and attempt to actually deliver that fan engagement again to skilled golf.’”
In follow, although, that underlying stress continues to be there. We’re coping with skilled athletes in a person sport that requires a sure degree of selfishness. They’ll all the time have their finest pursuits in thoughts. The concept of a disconnect present between followers and gamers on sluggish play — with the added perception that the tour is actively investigating how you can method this — simply makes a possible repair abundantly clear. Participant habits is simply going to vary a lot by itself accord. The PGA Tour has to place its foot down.
“If you get on the clock otherwise you get behind, swiftly these gamers begin rushing up and getting faster,” Thomas says. “It’s like, clearly you can do it.”
When Lowry performs competitively on the Europe-based DP World Tour, he notices a stark distinction: Guidelines officers are more likely to place teams on the clock. If play is simply as sluggish, if not slower, on the PGA Tour, why don’t the identical guidelines apply?
“They most likely don’t need to piss the gamers off,” the Irishman says.
The PGA Tour has a choice to make: Pressure gamers to hurry up with some robust love or depart its followers and their constant complaints within the mud. All indicators level to a alternative being imminent.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Images: Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire, Ryan Lochhead / PGA of America, Cliff Hawkins and Carmen Mandato / TGL Golf, Andrew Redington / Getty Pictures, Trinity Machan / Icon Sportswire)