Matt Fitzpatrick is one of the fastest professional golfers in the world, and he thinks other players on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour should follow his lead. On the heels of his victory at the RBC Heritage over the weekend, Fitzpatrick told Sky Sports that slow play is a real problem on both tours though he doesn’t believe anything will be done to stop it.
“The times need to be changed, the times need to be much less. That way when you’re not within those times, you can be penalized, properly punished for being slow,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think they give us way too much leeway to get around. You’re in a three ball, you should be around in four hours, four and a half absolute maximum.
“It’s a disgrace to get anywhere near that. You’re talking five, five and a half at some venues. It’s truly appalling. The problem is this conversation has gone on for years and years and years, and no one has ever done anything. It’s almost a waste of time talking about.”
The official rule according to the PGA Tour handbook is as follows.
The first group to start will be considered out of position if, at any time during the round, they exceed the time allotted to play, as detailed on the applicable course’s Pace of Play Chart.
Any subsequent group will be considered out of position if, at any time during the round, they (a) exceed the allotted time to play and (b) reach a par-3 hole that is open and free of play, reach a par-4 hole and have not played a stroke from the teeing ground before the hole is open and free of play, or reach a par–5 hole and all players have not played a stroke from the teeing ground before the hole is open and free of play.
Each golf course has a different chart, but none of them are under the four-hour mark Fitzpatrick noted, and almost all of them are obliterated on a weekly basis.
There are several pages of fines and penalties for various offenses by players in the PGA Tour handbook. However, it’s difficult to take any of it seriously, though, when you watch Patrick Cantlay, for example, take a full minute over a 4-foot putt.
“PGA Tour, DP World Tour,” added Fitzpatrick. “No one is going to do anything about it. It’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Cantlay has been in the crosshairs for the past few weeks now, partly because he’s been in contention at both the Masters and the RBC Heritage. Fitzpatrick played with Cantlay and Jordan Spieth in the final group last week at the Heritage, which Fitzpatrick went on to win in a playoff over Spieth.
At one point during the round, Fitzpatrick’s caddie, Billy Foster, was filmed acting as if he was going to fall asleep while Cantlay went through his routine. Their final round lasted five hours or longer, and when Cantlay dropped out of the three ball as Spieth and Fitzpatrick went on to the playoff, the pace of play sped up noticeably.
Earlier in the day, Cantlay faced a situation where his ball rolled onto a bulkhead on the 14th hole. He took several minutes, looking at it from every angle, determining what he should do. Here’s how he defended himself afterward.
“I just needed to make sure I was totally committed to what I decided to do there,” said Cantlay. “I wasn’t decided until the end, but ultimately I thought that if I would have dropped it, it would have meant double bogey more than likely, and I wanted to at least give myself a chance to stay in the golf tournament and try and get it up and down, which I did.”
This is a unique case, obviously, and Cantlay is not the lone offender in this category. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time for somebody who is quite slow.
However, this is emblematic of a bigger problem, which is that slow play makes for a bad television product and an even worse in-person product. One problem here, though, is that in a membership organization like the PGA Tour, the players have disproportionate sway over the rules and the adjudication of them.
As we have seen over the last year, there will be pushback against anything that makes players uncomfortable, but sometimes it’s discomfort that makes for a better long-term product. Fitzpatrick is right in this instance in that there should be stricter rules and more application of the ones that already exist. Unfortunately, history has also proven that he’s right about the other part of it, too. Nothing, it seems, is ever going to be done.