PGA Tour to allow distance measuring after Masters, test new pace-of-play policies before implementation

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced Tuesday that the league will begin implementing new pace-of-play policies starting next month. The rule change will first be introduced on the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas; it will include the assessment of stroke penalties for slow play violations.

Following the Masters, the PGA Tour itself will test a new policy allowing players to use distance-measuring devices during six tournaments between the year’s first and second majors, the latter being the PGA Championship. The PGA of America currently allows competitors in the PGA Championship to use such devices. The PGA Tour also plans to publish player specific pace-of-play statistics later in the year.

Justin Thomas said making such data public would “definitely” be effective in helping curb pace-of-play issues.

“It’s something I’ve said, if we put [the data] in the locker room or put it out [public], which would obviously end up getting out, but nobody wants to be known as [a slow player],” he explained. “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, like I want to know why I’m slow because obviously the first thing that any slower player thinks is that they’re not slow.”

The PGA Tour’s pace of play came under fire during the West Coast Swing when the final group at The American Express took 5 hours, 40 minutes to complete its final round. One week later at the Farmers Insurance Open, a similar pacing issue occurred and drew further criticism.

Potential solutions were laid out during the week of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am by the PGA Tour, including the use of distance-measuring devices, increasing use of the video review center to expedite rulings and publishing pace-of-play data with accountability for slow players.

“After talking to some guys, I think you just have to start … giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedExCup,” Collin Morikawa said. “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, and 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. 

“And 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.”

This past fall, the PGA Tour chose to adopt sweeping changes to its membership structure including the downsizing of tournament fields. One of the aims of this decision was to alleviate the pace-of-play problem on the PGA Tour. Although early returns were minimal, the league has seen improvement in recent weeks thanks to smaller fields and the utilization of twosomes.

“It’s easy to identify the problem,” Monahan said. “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.”