Rory McIlroy gives an insightful, interesting take on the PGA Tour's pace of play issue
Pace of play.
It's a topic of conversation that sticks to the side of golf and the PGA Tour like a barnacle on a whale. Fans complain about the slog on a weekly basis, and CBS broadcaster Dottie Pepper even called out the issue during the Farmers Insurance Open three weeks ago, saying "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, the best players in the world are back at Torrey Pines, this time for the Genesis Invitational — the event was moved from its annual home, Riviera Country Club, due to the wildfires that devastated the Los Angeles area — and they're being asked about it once again. That includes world No. 3 and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winner Rory McIlroy.
"The pace of play issue's a funny one because that all started here a few weeks ago when the golf course got really difficult and it was windy," he said. "And as I said earlier, the pitch and the slope of these greens and you get those things running at 12 or 13 with that wind, it's going to take a while, like that's just what it is. But then you have Pebble last week and CBS was complaining that we finished 30 minutes early. Like what do you want?
"So it is a part of it, but no one really — no one complains about pace of play at the majors. Usually if you're in one of those last couple of groups at Augusta on that Friday afternoon, it's probably the slowest round of the year. No one complains about pace of play at Augusta. I think people are — you need to understand that golf at the highest level takes a while, you know?
"But there's certainly — there's some things we can do to speed it up, but whether that takes a five and a half hour round to a five hour and 15 round, I don't think it's going to make such an astonishing change that — I think that's always just going to be a stick to beat golf with basically."
On Wednesday morning of Pebble Beach week, top Tour officials had a roundtable discussion with the media, and one of the topics discussed was the circuit allowing distance-measuring devices — i.e. rangefinders — during several tournaments this year in an effort to speed up play.
'We want to better understand how being out of position, how the ability to better understand the distance can not only increase the pace of play potentially but also send a signal to our fans that we are evolving and use of these modern devices could be a fit for the PGA Tour on a permanent basis in the future," Andy Weitz, chief marketing and communications officer and executive vice president of investor relations, said.
The Tour also disclosed that a new sub-committee made up of Player Advisory Council members Sam Burns, Adam Schenk and Jhonnatan Vegas has been created to study pace-of-play issues.
We'll see if any of these efforts bring any change, but like McIlroy said, will anything make more than a 15-minute difference?
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