PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s annual address at the Players Championship didn’t yield any searing insights into the true state of the Tour’s attempt to make a deal with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) and reunify golf.
Monahan parried question after question about the negotiations with the same line, offering scant detail about when or if golf fans can expect the game to come back together.
But while the PIF talks appear to be plodding along, the PGA Tour is attempting to speed things up on the course after the Tour’s snail-like pace became a hot topic at the start of this season.
On Tuesday, Monahan announced that PGA Tour will focus on improving pace of play by implementing and experimenting with a few different tactics that the Tour’s player-led speed-of-play group recommended. The group made these recommendations in accordance with the PGA Tour’s Fan Forward initiative, which identified four areas for the Tour to focus on as it looks to improve its product.
Later this year, the Tour will publish speed-of-play-related statistics, including the names of the fastest and slowest players.
“Looking at average stroke times, this is not — this is not done so from the standpoint of negativity,” Monahan said Tuesday. “There’s also a really positive element to this. They’re celebrating the players that are playing faster and improving, and at the same time, there’s giving players the information that they need to have to be able to improve in the eyes of not only how they’re competing but also in the eyes of our fans. So I look at this as a very positive development.”
Shotlink data gives the Tour exact stroke time for each player. The Tour has had this information but is now finally willing to make it public with buy-in from its players, whether they are on the fast or slow side.
“It definitely is,” Justin Thomas said Tuesday when asked if he’d be in favor of releasing the stroke data. “If we put it in the locker room or put it out — nobody wants to be known as that. I’m the first to admit I’m on the slow side of players. It bothers me, but I’ve talked to many officials about it. I want to know why I’m slow because, obviously, the first thing that any slower player thinks is that they’re not slow.
“I never want to be the guy that gets paired with somebody, and that person is like, oh, my gosh, I have to play with Justin. He’s so slow. Because I know guys that I get paired with that I’m like, oh, my gosh, I have to play with so-and-so. They’re so slow. It’s not a good feeling because you know you’re going to be on the clock, you know, and that’s not fun.”
Collin Morikawa has long been a proponent of releasing names (call it pace shaming) and getting the Tour to hit the worst offenders where it hurts the most.
“I think it should be released; I don’t know why you wouldn’t want it to be released,” Morikawa said on Tuesday. “I think you just have to start stroking guys and giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedExCup. What I’ve learned is that monetary fines are useless. We make so much money, and some guys frankly could care less about — I don’t know how much the fines are, but whatever X amount they are. I think they care more about playing good golf and making sure they make the playoffs and making sure they make, you know, 70, 50, 30. That’s where it hits hard.
“I see no issue with it. I think what is there to hide, right? If you’re slow, you know you’re slow. I mean, if you don’t know, then there’s an issue. To me, there’s no issue with letting it out, right. It’s only going to make things better because then you’re either going to have a target on you, put a little more pressure and hopefully you pick it up, or you get penalized. Like, it’s very simple.”
It is not yet clear how or when the PGA Tour will implement the data, but this does mark a significant change in Tour policy as it starts to take steps toward fixing a problem that seemingly has a simple solution: identify the worst offenders and penalize them on the scorecard.
“I think there’s a real commitment from players across the board to make certain that we’re doing everything that we possibly can to improve, and these three steps are just a start,” Monahan said. “It’s easy to identify the problem. It’s a little bit harder to find the solution, just given the depth and breadth of everything that goes into pace of play. But we are committed to finding the right solutions and making progress on that front.”
Starting in April, the PGA Tour will use the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas to experiment with a new “speed-of-play” policy that will include stroking players who violate slow-play rules. The Tour also will experiment with using range finders in the six tournaments between the Masters and PGA Championship.
By tying the pace-of-play issue to the Fan Forward initiative and agreeing to publish data, the Tour is drawing a line in the sand about its pace problem and vowing to get things moving.
That’s a positive step forward to fix an issue that shouldn’t take a fan survey to solve, but it’s progress nonetheless. Still unclear, though, is how serious and effective the Tour’s efforts will be and whether or not the recommendations will lead to change Tour players will rubber stamp.
Like almost everything in pro golf these days, there’s no timeline for a conclusion.
