Rory McIlroy: Slow play on PGA TOUR is an “epidemic”

Rory McIlroy finished Friday evening tied for the lead at THE PLAYERS Championship, but he also took several players, and the PGA TOUR itself, to task for continuing to allow slow play to be an issue.

Rory McIlroy heads into the weekend at THE PLAYERS Championship tied for the lead, in one of the biggest events on the PGA TOUR calendar. However, that wasn’t the only thing on his mind when he spoke with the press after his round. The issue of slow play was brought up, and Rory did not hold back on his answer.

“Because they don’t do anything about it,” McIlroy said, when asked why play felt slower than reasonable over the previous two days. “It’s become somewhat of an epidemic on TOUR.”

That’s putting it lightly, if you ask me, but I’ll defer to the guy with four majors, 23 professional wins and over $43 million in career earnings. I’d say that’s a fairly safe guy to follow when it comes to on-course etiquette.

“Look, it’s our livelihood, and people are gonna take their time, and as the course dries up and gets firmer and gets tougher guys are gonna take their time,” McIlroy continued. “But the fact that someone didn’t finish yesterday – we’ve just been through Daylight Savings, and the tee times – and someone had to come out today because there wasn’t enough light to finish [the first round], that’s unacceptable.”

That someone in question is Anirban Lahiri, who was literally the only person left on the course on Thursday night. He came out early Friday to close out a par on No. 18. Play was equally slow on Friday, as McIlroy’s group, which included Phil Mickelson and Matt Kuchar, got around in about five hours, 20 minutes, which is slow by TOUR standards, but felt almost speedy compared to many of the other groups.

What makes this worse is that this is becoming a nearly weekly occurrence on TOUR, with more high-profile players becoming vocal about it. This week it’s Rory, but earlier this year it was Brooks Koepka commenting on Bryson DeChambeau’s, well, deliberate pre-shot routine. J.B. Holmes won the Genesis Open, but did so at a snail’s pace, which took away from his first victory on TOUR in almost four years. (Heck, I wrote about it a year ago when Holmes took four minutes to lay up on 18 at Torrey Pines.)

There are two very clear sides to this issue, to be fair. It absolutely should not take a group of two or three professional golfers more than five hours to play 18 holes. They’re not blasting it into every bunker and tree line on the course (you would hope), there are forecaddies to help locate shots in the rough, and they generally have a decent idea of the shot they want to hit pretty quickly when they find it.

Then there’s the other side, the side that Holmes and so many others who have been accused of slow play take. There’s a ton of money at stake each week on TOUR. Whether you’re in the lead and playing for a seven-figure payday, or a grinder just hoping to maintain your status, each week could be career-changing, even life-changing for a lot of these guys.

There has to be a balance somewhere. Rory McIlroy is one of the most successful golfers of a generation, and he’s also one of the fastest. The same can be said for Dustin Johnson. In a Sports Illustrated/Golf.com survey, though, players also named Jason Day and Jordan Spieth as two of the slowest on TOUR. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve been in late pairings so much in their career, though, where extra leeway is almost always given.

At the end of the day, Rory McIlroy is right. Nothing will happen to slow play unless the TOUR makes it a priority. Commissioner Monahan doesn’t seem to be too worried about it at the moment, and why would he be? Business is as good as its been in decades. But when top stars are out there making it known that they’re not happy, something needs to change.