Slow play won’t end on the PGA TOUR until leaders actually do something

Blame the players all you want, but the reality is that slow play will still be a thing until those with actual power decide to step up and stop it.

Bryson DeChambeau has become the latest whipping boy in the ongoing drama that is slow play on the PGA TOUR. And I mean that in the most literal sense of the term’s origins: he’s taking all the punishment for the Tour’s own failures.

DeChambeau went viral over the weekend for a pair of videos that are objectively slow, even without any context. The first shows him pacing off a 70-yard pitch shot, which took over three minutes. The second saw DeChambeau reading an eight-foot putt…and reading it some more…and reading it from a different angle. That process took over two minutes, and he still missed it.

Fans and – surprisingly, at least to some – fellow players have absolutely destroyed Bryson for these admittedly brutal clips, so much so that he felt the need to speak out after his third-round 71 at THE NORTHERN TRUST. Luke Donald, Eddie Pepperell, Rich Beem, and playing partner Justin Thomas all had their way with DeChambeau (to verying degrees of savagery) and the mad scientist let everyone know that he was not having it.

"“I play a different way out there. I take my 40 seconds that’s been allotted, sometimes over, absolutely,” DeChambeau said. “Totally agree. It’s maybe 5 percent of the time. But I’ll tell you that it’s really kind of unfortunate the way it’s perceived because there’s a lot of other guys that take a lot of time. They don’t talk about this matter, and for me personally, it is an attack. … People don’t realize the harm they are doing to the individuals.”"

Bryson also mentioned that he didn’t like the fact that so many of his colleagues were taking the chance to pile up online instead of dealing with things face to face.

"“We are all trying to do our best to play well and make our livelihoods and win tournaments, right,” DeChambeau said. “But when you start attacking people on Twitter, it’s like, come on, dude. Let’s have some more balls to come and speak to my face about that.”"

So here’s where things get sticky. First, no matter how much people will hate to admit it, DeChambeau is FAR from the only offender, and he may not even be the worst. J.B. Holmes is right up there with the slowest players, and guys like Kevin Na and Sergio Garcia have gotten their own lashings for slow play as well.

Secondly, and far more importantly, DeChambeau may be breaking a rule, but it’s one that the PGA TOUR seems unwilling to actually do anything to push legitimate change. In a way, can you break a rule that has no actual consequences?

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Oh, don’t get it wrong, the TOUR itself has rules on paper, and they’re not even hard to find. There are specific round times set for each course, customized by the TOUR and, one would believe, given or at least available to players and caddies. In general, groups will be given a warning before they’re timed, and then individual players will be put “on the clock”. The first player to a shot gets 50 seconds, subsequent players get 40.

Supposedly, if a player gets two “bad times” after being told they’re on the clock, they receive a penalty stroke. A third slow play penalty is two strokes (three total), and a fourth is disqualification. There’s even a fine structure, but of course, the Tour doesn’t disclose much in the way of discipline, so that might as well be a myth right now.

In 2017, the PGA TOUR handed down its first slow play penalty strokes IN TWENTY-TWO YEARS. I’m sure the guys who played between 1995 and 2017 were all zipping around the course, right? No, it’s just always been accepted that even after multiple warnings, Tour officials are hesitant to pull the trigger on what’s written in their own flipping rule book.

They’ll give a penalty for a ball that moves a sixteenth of a dimple, but they won’t ask a two-ball to get through in less than four hours? It’s absurd, and if even the biggest stars in the game can’t force a change in the slow play trend, we’ll know that the Tour may as well not even have a rule book.

It should be simple – shot clocks for all players from round one until the final putt drops. The first bad time is a warning, the second is a stroke, no questions asked. LeBron James doesn’t get a 45-second clock just because his team is down one in an NBA Finals game, does he? Tom Brady doesn’t get two minutes to dissect a defense at the line of scrimmage in the Super Bowl just because it’s really really important.

This is a sport, and there are rules. Enforce them or get rid of them, but don’t leave it up to random discretion, because that’s when things get ugly.

Rory McIlroy has called for this change straight up. Brooks Koepka has, too. This isn’t complicated, and frankly, I’m not even sure what incentive the Tour has to not enforce this. Long-time official Slugger White told Golf Digest that he hesitates to pull a stroke on a player because of the “what if?” scenario: What if this slow play penalty costs a guy on the bubble his Tour card? What if that means his kid can’t go to college?

I’m sorry, but what if the guy just played faster, or better? We’re not all cut out to be top-level pros. Let the guys who can play within the rules do it, and if you can’t (or won’t) keep up…well, there’s plenty of other jobs out there. If Jay Monahan wants slow play to stop, he’ll make it a point to enforce the existing rules and keep his players – and paying customers – happy.