Lynch: The PGA Tour puts a high value on players' time. Not so much on ours

USA Today

29-01-2025

Lynch: The PGA Tour puts a high value on players' time. Not so much on ours
Dottie Pepper probably thought her heroics in golf ended a quarter-century ago with her last LPGA Tour victory, but on Saturday she proved the truth of an acerbic proverb that not all heroes wear capes. Some wear a headset and stout walking shoes.
For three hours the CBS Sports announcer kept her peace while following the final group around Torrey Pines at the Farmers Insurance Open, a period that bought her only enough time to reach the 10th tee. 'You know, Frank,' she finally said — with commendable calm — to her colleague, Mr. Nobilo, 'I think we're starting to need a new word to talk about this pace of play issue, and it's respect. For your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasts, for all of it. It's just gotta get better.'
'Well said,' Nobilo quickly replied, ensuring that Pepper did not stand alone.
Dissemblers have a rote list of reasons each time slow play surfaces as a sore point on the PGA Tour. The conditions are tough. The pressure of the moment is high. The rewards at stake are life-altering. Sometimes conditions are a cause. Wind gusts topped 20 mph at Torrey Pines, which really shouldn't matter except that green speeds are pushed to the limit, so it did matter. But the cul-de-sac of course set-up leads directly to the dead-end alley of equipment standards, a detour that offers no imminent fix for slow play. Last week's American Express was contested under a dome of perfect Palm Springs weather yet the final group needed five hours 39 minutes to finish. And that was with a veritable gallop for the final third of the round since they required four hours for the first 12 holes. The Amex ran 40 minutes beyond its broadcast window.
The final group at Torrey Pines was even slower: five hours 45 minutes. Not even skilled tournament TV producers like Tommy Roy (NBC) and Sellers Shy (CBS) can put enough lipstick on that pig.
Slow-play gripes are nothing new on Tour or at Torrey Pines. In 2018, J.B. Holmes iced a fellow competitor by dawdling on the 72nd hole for four minutes 10 seconds before hitting a shot. Roger Bannister ran a mile faster in crappy leather spikes. Seven years and several policy changes later, you'd sooner find a Tour player familiar with Swahili than one conversant with pace of play regulations. One fact remains: Donald Trump has accumulated more impeachments in the past five years than Tour players have amassed stroke penalties for slow play in the last three decades.
That owes to a milquetoast culture of enforcement, which isn't to suggest there actually is enforcement. The (now-retired) longtime rules supremo, Slugger White, once told Golf Digest that he wouldn't impose a stroke penalty lest the resulting loss of position and income impact whether a player could send his kid to college. That's the kind of paternalistic nonsense that has governed slow play for generations. If the Tour bothers to impose fines, those aren't made public. And that's part of the problem. It cements a perception of doing nothing.
There are two possible sources for a solution. It could bubble up from the Player Advisory Council, which is the traditional starting point for such housekeeping matters, but there's scant evidence of any stomach for that. Which leaves the other potential source: them what owns the Tour.
While players consider themselves to be owners thanks to their equity grants, ownership is actually the privilege of those who sign checks, not those who cash 'em. Among the Strategic Sports Group investors, John Henry owns the Red Sox and Steve Cohen owns the Mets (bless his heart). They know how negative narratives around laborious play in a consumer-facing sports product can have consumers start facing the other way. They also know how it can be remedied. Major League Baseball introduced a pitch clock in 2023 and it has shaved 30 minutes off the average game.
How long will the Tour's private equity partners silently watch the clock tick by while fans grumble, players shrug and officials indulge? Perhaps the reduction in field sizes announced for 2026 will improve pace of play, as has been promised, but it's an indictment that kicking guys off the Tour is preferable to taking a cattle prod to slow pokes. (Unless, of course, slow play is merely a convenient excuse to cull the lower ranks of the membership anyway.)
The slow play problem isn't going away, although fans are, if broadcast ratings are any guide. And that's what has changed in this hoary old issue — the context. The PGA Tour no longer enjoys a reservoir of goodwill among fans. Player greed has laid waste to that. Headquarters is rolling out a new Fan Forward initiative that will hopefully deliver something meaningful to its most underserved constituency — those who consume its product — but bells and whistles have limited impact if the core product continues to disappoint fans and partners. It's been made clear how much the time of Tour players is valued.
Like Dottie said, it's overdue that fans and partners were accorded the same respect.