PGA Tour Puts The Slow-Play On Slow Play Issue

The Sheriff Of Nottingham   (aka tour commish Jay Monahan) has spoken.

He’s decided to take the J.B. Holmes/Bryson DeChambeau approach to this issue of slow play on the PGA Tour.

In other words, the PGA Tour will slow-play the slow play issues.

The European Tour didn’t waste much time.  That tour has set forth new rules for their 2020 season governing the pace of play.

Key to the European Tour changes will be a player only having to violate the time allowances twice in a round to incur a one-shot penalty. In addition, there will be significantly increased fines for players who are regularly placed  on the clock throughout the season, along with reduced times for players to play shots.

They will also use technology with the trial of a new “pace of play” timing system at next month’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

The system will provide referees with the precise times for every group through every hole to make sure that no gaps are missed. On-tee displays will be linked to a system which will also provide the players instantaneous information on their position in relation to the group in front.

When players are out of position and either being monitored or timed, a one-shot penalty will be incurred after two bad times.   Right now,  a player would be monitored and if he breaches the time allowance (50 seconds for first to play, 40 seconds for second or third to play) he will then be officially timed and would then have to breach twice more before being given a one shot penalty. Players will have the option to request one time extension per round, giving an additional 40 seconds to hit a shot on this request.

Position timing, introduced at the same time as Monitoring, has been beefed up. The time allowed to play a shot when being monitored in position (currently double the out of position times above), will be reduced by 15 percent, from 100 and 80 seconds down to 85 and 70 seconds respectively for first and second and third to play.  Referees are now mandated to be proactive in targeting known slow players for in position timing.

Well, that probably sounded a bit complicated for The Sheriff and his Sinister Band Of Henchmen.

So the Sheriff gave us this:

“We’ve been working on this, and we can be criticized for taking too long, but …….

“We’re on our path, and we’re on our plan,” he said this past Tuesday at East Lake.  “We’re obviously two different tours, on different golf courses with different setups.  I wouldn’t say we’re going to be influenced in any way by it (the European Tour’s decision).”

For now they’ve kicked the can down the road.  When they’ll come up with something is uncertain.

But something needs to happen sooner than later.

For now, they’re putting the old “slow play” on the pace of play dilemma.