Tom Kim admits he’s struggling with pace of play. Here’s his reason why

The TGL shot clock? It’s nice, Tom Kim said. It’s comfortable. 

Then he talked about his golf where there isn’t only 40 seconds to hit. 

You may have wondered what he’d say, as slow play talk’s been renewed on the pro tours and Kim’s become a bit of a lightning rod on the subject. First, there were five-and-a-half-hour rounds at the American Express tournament. Then, pace of play a week later at the Farmers Insurance Open led CBS analyst Dottie Pepper to call for less selfishness from players. Then came a moment with Kim.

During Golf Channel’s broadcast of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am’s final round earlier this month, he was shown taking 40 seconds to address his ball, then another 25 to take a swing. When he did, his ball ended up in a penalty area — and announcers had this back and forth:

Said analyst Jim Gallagher Jr.: “A little less waggle might have helped.” 

Said Frank Nobilo: “It was not worth the wait.”

Said Gallagher Jr.: “For us or for him.” 

On Tuesday night, Kim offered his thoughts. After play in TGL, a reporter had asked Kim how one of the simulator-based league’s features — a 40-second shot clock — impacted his pace of play, which drew this answer:

“It’s nice,” he said after a short laugh. “I think I’m comfortable over the shot clock.”

Unprompted, Kim then continued. He mentioned his play at the Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines two weeks ago, and at the WM Phoenix Open the week before that. He talked about a reason behind his pace of play. 

“I’ve struggled with pace of play due to a lot of fighting with some mental stuff,” Kim said, “but it’s getting a lot better. Torrey was a really good week for me. My pace of play got really improved starting from Waste Management, too. It’s something I’ve been working on. It helps when I feel like over the shot clock here, I know I’m comfortable over it, so I know I’m not struggling; it was just a matter of going out in tournaments and consistently doing it and beating that mental barrier.”

Notably, four days before Kim’s shot at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the PGA Tour said it would look into speeding up play. Among the proposed initiatives are the use of distance-measuring devices, the publication of pace-of-play data, the disclosure of fines and penalties issued for slow play, and the use of video review during rulings. 

Meanwhile, Kim’s caddie, Paul Tesori, said that pace of play is also a looper responsibility. He said he learned that from one of his former pros, three-time major winner Vijay Singh. 

“Vijay taught me that very, very early on that I can help manage all of that,” Tesori said recently on Sirius XM’s “The Scorecard.” “So I’ve lost a lot of weight this year; I’m walking really fast to get to the ball first, even some half-jogs. I’m … just trying to get to the ball a little bit faster, making sure the numbers that are coming out are very clear, very concise and not too many numbers. You know, if he’s not quite with me, say, hey, bud, let’s go, are you ready? There’s all these little small tricks that you can do to make sure. If we’re talking from a green to a tee and it’s a par-4, I’ve already told him the wind, so he doesn’t have to get up there and say, hey, Paul, where’s the wind? I’ve already told him it’s into and out of the left. It’s just another little four seconds that you can cut off of what’s going on. 

“So we hear the noise. The only way you cancel the noise is to fix whatever problem that is. But we also live in America and we live in a world where, you know, it doesn’t matter who you voted for as president — 50 percent of you thought that you were a genius and the other 50 percent thinks that you’re terrible. And it just kind of lives that way in social media and out on Tour a lot of the times, too. Tom is very, very out there. I think ever since the Netflix show and obviously for the stuff that he’s already done on Tour, winning three times early, he’s got the spotlight on him. I mean, he’s put that on himself. It helps pay a lot of the bills, so to say, but also it’s going to come with some negatives and you have to be prepared for it. You can’t react to it, but you can try and help the areas that you can control.”  

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