There was plenty of chatter when the PGA Tour announced it would reduce rather than raise the fines for some of its slow-play penalties as part of sweeping changes coming to the PGA Tour that were officially approved on Monday.
These include reducing the fine structure of ‘Bad Times’ from $50,000 to $10,000, in addition to reducing ‘Excessive Shot Times’ fines from $10,000 to $5,000.
In addition, players will no longer be subject to fines solely as a result of ‘Timings,’ ‘Bad Times’ and ‘Excessive Shot Times’ during the majors, with an amendment to the definition of ‘Out Of Position’ to recognize that, if a group is on a par-3 and the group in front is still on the tee of the next hole, they are in good position.
The memo to players made clear that the Rules Committee “continues to evaluate the Pace of Play data,” which has “accurately identified the slowest players following the creation of the new Average Stroke Time (AST) policy.
Unlike the previously mentioned reductions, the fine for ten ASTs jumped from $20,000 to $50,000.
The committee also concluded more needs to be done to provide the slowest players with an “immediate incentive” to play more quickly. As a result, they are instituting the introduction of an ‘Excessive Average Time Stroke Time.’ At the conclusion of a tournament, if a player has an Average Stroke Time of 12 seconds or more above the field average and played in all four rounds, they will be hit with an Excessive Average Stroke Time penalty.
The first two sanctions will not be accompanied by a fine, but the third will punished to the tune of $50,000 followed by $10,000 per subsequent offence.
At first blush, these policy changes felt like a slap on the wrist when even No. 125 on the season-long money list is banking seven figures. The fines most certainly haven’t kept up with purse inflation. But Gary Young, the Tour’s senior vice president of rules and competition, breaks it down and gives his version of why the new rules actually give the Tour’s officials more latitude to identify the slowest players and fine them if they don’t change their routine and take pace of play seriously.
Young dishes on the Tour’s version of a shot clock, the multiplier effect for fines, a possible slow-play sub-committee and the potential for public shaming in this very informative look at the changes coming to pace-of-play rules changes on the Tour. (Spoiler alert: still not going to be giving out strokes.)
The PGA Tour sign at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club. (Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch)
Young wants it to be known — to some extent — there are consequences for slow play. “We’ve never aired our dirty laundry to the public as far as what type of fines are doled out. But I can promise you there have been significant fines in the past that players have paid and it gets their attention, that’s for sure.
“The general public might think that the fines aren’t significant enough, but they are quite significant and for habitual or repeat offenders, they escalate. So if a person has reached 10 timings during a season and pays the $50,000 fine, the following year, if he gets to 10 timings, everything doubles for that player, so now he’s paying a $100,000 fine. Let’s just, leave it at that.”
Scottie Scheffler looks over a ball placement with a rules official on the first hole during the third round of the WGC – FedEx St. Jude Invitational golf tournament at TPC Southwind. (Photo: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports)
It’s easy to forget that the rules officials have a hard job with 18 holes and multiple balls in the air at any time. Most other sports have one confined field and one ball to monitor. But as Young noted, the eight officials at an event have an app on their phones that help keep an eye on the entire field. “Even if we’re in a zone where we struggle to see one particular hole, we all have an app on our phone that gives us, you know, basically alerts us if someone’s out of position with the group ahead of them coming out of a hole, so we can quickly react.
“We talk pace of play all day long on the radio to one another, and that’s a big part of it is trying to isolate who the problems are, who is not making the adjustment, and we will time them individually if we have to, and we do. And oftentimes, you know, they don’t like it, but when we have facts to back everything up — and happy to share the numbers with them after their round — and they can see what led to them being individually time versus the entire group.
“When you sit down with them and you show them hard data, you can show them very clearly. ‘Look, this is nothing personal but you stand out from your peers. Your numbers are not what they need to be.’ And so we sit down with those players. We have it broken down into category. They can see how long it takes them to hit a tee shot, an approach shot, shots around the green, going for it, shots on par fives, and then also putting so when we see that by category and where they rank with their peers, it’s very easy for them to see the area of their game that they need to improve. And we’ve always said to them, ‘Look, we’re not trying to make you a fast player. We just need you to be an average speed player.’ That’s what we’re looking for.”
The caddie for Gary Woodland (not pictured) holds the pine flag on the sixth hole during the second round of the Tour Championship golf tournament at East Lake Golf Club. Mandatory Credit: Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports
“I hear what you’re saying, but $50,000 hurts. If they’re a repeat offender, they’re into the multiplier category, where their fines are being doubled, and then also the Rules Committee has, in our pace policy, we have the ability, in special cases, to sanction players beyond the fine structure. We have done that as well in recent years, where we’ve had the slowest players on a special program of paying fines every week prior to playing, and again, that’s just something that is internal, that’s between us and the players, but if they refuse to make change to their routines and have that attitude that, you know, $50,000 isn’t really much, and I’ll just pay the fines, well, in those particular cases, we have a special program where, again, the Rules Committee has been given the authority to put special sanctions on a player. So let’s just leave it at that has occurred more than once in the last couple of years where someone’s been under special sanctions.
Fans watch from the gallery as Shane Lowry plays his shot from the first tee during the final round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports
When it was suggested public shaming of the slowest players might be the most effective deterrent, Young didn’t shoot the idea down entirely.
“Our job is not to put our players in a situation where the general public starts getting on them about something like that. But I agree, there is a certain element to I think you called it public shaming or just shaming of them in some way, it certainly helps make change, doesn’t it? I don’t know, maybe somewhere down the road, the PAC will have a different attitude, and maybe that is an element that someday they would want to put in, but that’s not for me to make that decision. It’s a membership organization and if they felt strongly about sharing that information, that’s their decision to make down the road. But right now, it’s not part of our policy.”
A PGA Tour sign is displayed near the tee box on the 13th hole ahead of the 3M Open on July 21, 2021 in Blaine, Minnesota. (Photo: David Berding/Getty Images)
The knee-jerk reaction to seeing some of the fines for slow play were being reduced was ridicule. The fines have been ineffective in improving pace of play, the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig, and to lower some of them given the inflation in purses at first blush seems outrageous. Where is the motivation to play faster when you’re making $4 million and being fined $20,000 and no one even knows about it? But Young explained the reasons behind it and why the new policy has the potential to put a serious dent into the wallet of slow players.
“I hear what you’re saying, people would like to always see a more stern punishment. I think people really saw some reductions going on and said that doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you reduce some fines? Well, to us, those fines could occur more frequently and we want the officials to be comfortable doling out those particular fines, those lower level fines, but the one that’s the big one, that is the one that really is being kept on every player and comparing players week to week under the same conditions, and it’s identifying the slowest five to 10 percent every week. When we look back at the historical data for this past year, every week somewhere between five and 10 percent of the field, the slowest players received an AST infraction. That’s our average stroke time infraction. That is what our pace policy is all about. It’s about identifying the slowest players and getting them to change their behavior. And they need to become more of an average speed player, and we will work with them and educate them as much as we can on where they’re falling short. But the bottom line is, if they don’t comply, then that’s where the fine is going to be heaviest. I think everyone feels that the right group of individuals is being captured week in and week out, and those are the ones that are most disruptive to what we’re trying to accomplish each week, which is a smooth pace of play for everyone in the field. By the end of the season, they will have accumulated enough ASPs that you’ll just have to trust me again. We don’t really discuss it publicly, but they will pay heavy fines. And their peers will know it as well.”
PGA Tour ShotLink truck. (PGA Tour)
The idea of instituting a shot clock has largely been shot down by the Tour. It’s not feasible, they argue, and would be too labor-intensive to have a shot clock on every player.
“But we really do have our very own version of a shot clock,” Young explained. “Using ShotLink data, every shot has its own time stamp and we turn that into the Average Time Stroke. In essence, every player is being clocked. It’s incredibly accurate and identifies the slowest players in every tournament and ranks them. It’s basically our new standard for pace of play. Those few individuals that are disruptive, they’re going to pay heavy fines.”
Beau Hossler of the United States talks with a rules official on the fifth green during the first round of the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club on May 23, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images)
Young didn’t get into any specifics or give a timeline for its creation but he hinted that a player-led committee to deal with slow play could be formed in the not-too-distant future. “We’re talking about possibly establishing a pace of play subcommittee of their peers, and we will continue that conversation further,” he said. “That may be something else that we decide to implement this season where there’s a review committee of their peers. So just another sort of check and balance.”
Chez Reavie of the United States talks with rules official, Brian Claar, on the fourth hole during the second round of THE PLAYERS Championship on THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass on March 10, 2023 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
If the PGA Tour really wanted to get serious about fixing its pace-of-play problem, it would strengthen its policy for handing out penalty strokes, which has barely been used for the last 30 years. When Young was asked why haven’t rules officials found the stroke penalty to be effective, he responded, “I don’t know that we don’t find it effective. The word I’m looking for, it’s inequitable. I think we find it that way. You could have someone who’s in second place and they end up getting their second bad time while being timed, and that cost them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, and then someone who is maybe in 60th place, they do the same thing and pay a far lesser penalty for that. But that’s not to say that in any way we’ve shied away from it.”
But the system in place just isn’t creditable and is a disservice to the pace-of-play. In order to be penalized a stroke for slow play, first an official warns a group that they are out of position, then it gets told they are being put on the clock. If a player exceeds the time limit, the official has to tell them immediately but there is no punishment for the first bad time; not until the second bad time is a player penalized.
“There’s four different stages too (getting penalized a stroke for slow play), and you’d have to be somewhat crazy or not paying attention to ever reach that final stage. So I think people get frustrated that they don’t see more penalties passed out, but it’s more just the way the system is designed. You’ve had multiple warnings along the way before you ever get to the penalty phase. We did change that a couple years ago now and a bad time carries forward with the player to future rounds throughout the tournament, so the likelihood has increased.”
Does he envision the likelihood of an increase in penalty strokes for slow play being dished out with smaller fields approved for beginning in 2026?
“Unless they change the structure of the process, which is a four-tiered process, no,” he said. “If the players themselves want to make a serious change to it and want to visit moving to a penalty phase sooner, it’s their organization, we certainly would implement it if that’s something they want to put into effect. But we’re not there right now.”
