Golf's Pace Problem: Is the Tour Finally Catching On?
Let’s be honest. We’ve all been there. Stuck behind a group that’s taking an eternity to play a single hole. You start questioning life choices. Maybe even your commitment to this damn game. Well, it turns out the pros aren’t immune. In fact, some of them are downright glacial. And now, the PGA Tour’s feeder league, the Korn Ferry Tour, is actually doing something about it. They’re timing these guys. Seriously. And what they’re finding is… well, it’s not exactly a shocker, but it’s exposing the slowpokes.
The Speed Demons and the Tortoises
You got your Dylan Menantes out there. This guy’s a freak of nature. Plays faster than a speeding bullet. Off the tee? 16 seconds quicker than the average Korn Ferry Tour pro. Approach shots, around the greens? 14 seconds faster. Even on the greens, where most guys take their sweet time to agonize over a three-footer, he’s still zipping along. He just cooks his way around the course. It’s almost too fast. Makes you wonder if he’s even thinking.
But here’s the kicker. For every Menante, there’s a grinder on the other end of the spectrum. The ones who make you want to scream. Not a ton of them, mind you. But enough to make the PGA Tour sit up and say, “Alright, this is getting ridiculous.” Jordan Harris, the chief referee for the Korn Ferry Tour, puts it bluntly: “It’s only a very small percentage that each week seemingly could improve their pace of play.” The big question is, will these guys actually change their ways now that they’re being exposed?
How They're Actually Timing It
So, how are they getting these numbers? It’s not rocket science, but it requires some serious legwork. Tournament volunteers are walking with the groups, armed with phones and a special app. When a player steps up to hit, the volunteer taps the screen. They hold it there until the ball is struck, then release. Boom. Time-stamped. Every single shot.
The clock is ticking for everyone. Player 1 hits, gets a timestamp. Player 2 hits, gets a timestamp. Between those timestamps, yeah, there are always going to be some unavoidable delays. Maybe waiting for Player 1’s ball to land, or a caddie shushing a loudmouth fan. But for the most part, these timestamps paint a pretty clear picture. If you’re a slow player, well, you’re about to be found out. It’s that simple.
KFT officials can see all this data in real-time. Every player’s times are aggregated. How quickly are they ready to play after the guy in front of them? It’s broken down by shot type too: off the tee, approach, around the greens, and putting. It’s not perfect. The very first player to hit in a group? They don’t get timed, which is a bit of a glitch they’re trying to fix. But overall, the data seems to match what the officials, and even the players themselves, are seeing out there week after week. As Harris puts it, “Every week, we look at the list and it confirms what we’re seeing with our own eyeballs. We don’t see anomalies.”
The "Pace of Play Guy" and Dealing with the Slowpokes
Jordan Harris has apparently become the “Pace of Play Guy” for the Korn Ferry Tour. He’s the one who has to deliver the tough news. He knows how finicky golf can be. Hundreds of acres, unpredictable bounces, the whole nine yards. What happens if there’s a ruling that requires a drop? Those times? They get tossed out. Smart. They also discard the slowest 10 percent of times for each player, every week. Because, you know, players in contention tend to play a bit slower. Harris points out that most KFT winners lately have had an “average stroke time” infraction – meaning they were more than seven seconds slower than the field average on their shots. The only recent winner who didn’t? You guessed it. Dylan Menante.
Menante is, in a way, the golden boy of this whole experiment. The KFT wants to highlight the quick players, create positive narratives. He’s perfect for that. But the real goal is to help – or fix – the slower pros. The KFT has three other objectives:
- Provide better context for the fans.
- Support players who have been unfairly labeled as slow.
- Tell the tortoises it’s time to speed it up.
And that’s where things get a bit hairy.
Is Pace of Play Even a Problem?
Cole Sherwood, a KFT pro, says, “If you ask the Korn Ferry guys, ‘Is pace of play a problem?’, I bet 80% of them say, ‘Yes.'” But then he adds the crucial part: “But then if you asked them, ‘How do we fix it?’, I think people just draw a blank because it’s not one thing in particular.”
Sherwood himself is on the slower side, ranking 113th out of 137 players. He’s about 3.45 seconds slower than average, which is a whopping 20 seconds slower than Menante. But Sherwood isn’t outrageously slow in any one area. He’s just a bit sluggish across the board. Never to the point where it feels like a real issue. When he looks at the data, though, one thing jumps out at him. “If you look at the middle 50%, take away the outliers,” he says, “it’s maybe a seven-second difference.”
Seriously, not even seven seconds! The players from 34th to 103rd are separated by about five seconds in total across all their shots. The KFT officials are pretty comfortable with that group. It’s the bottom 10 to 15 players that have them worried. Each week, the data gets shared. Any player who takes seven seconds or longer to play than the field average gets an “Average Stroke Time violation.” Get five of those violations, and the KFT steps in with a message. A pretty clear message.
The Fines: When Slow Play Gets Expensive
“Hey, we don’t want you to have to pay to play golf, right?,” Harris says. Translation: If you keep dragging your feet, it’s going to cost you. Big time. After the 10th violation, players get hit with a $50,000 fine. For the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th violations, it’s $5,000 each. And then, for every violation after that, it’s an extra $10,000. This system is designed to penalize players only when they’ve consistently played at a snail’s pace and haven’t bothered to change anything about their process.
Now, don’t get this twisted. There are no shot clocks out there. No buzzers like you see in those exhibition events. Sherwood played with Ian Gilligan recently, who’s one of the slowest players on the KFT this year and is probably well on his way to a season-long fine. But Sherwood says, “There was never one time that I thought he was slow. Never even crossed my mind.”
Sherwood seems to accept that golf is just a bit of a slow game. He doesn’t see a quick fix like baseball got with its pitch clock. But like baseball used its minor leagues to test things out, the PGA Tour is using the KFT to try and create some change. Harris points out it took over a decade for pitch clocks to make it from the minor leagues to the big leagues. He’s seen enough from the data to think it would be a good thing for the PGA Tour to implement it too. The PGA Tour has said they want to, but, you know, golf. It’s not exactly known for its speed of decision-making.
What the Speed Demon Thinks
And what about our speed demon, Dylan Menante? He thinks it’s an issue that’s only going to get bigger on the main tour. “It seems like on the bigger tour it’s a bigger issue,” Menante says. “And I think it’s coming out more and more where guys are getting recorded by fans of ‘Oh, you took a minute and 20 seconds to hit a six-footer.’ Like, come on.”
He believes, “It should just be faster. I think on our tour, they’re really doing a good job. I hope it gets moved up to the PGA Tour just for the fact that accountability is key. Everyone should get a level playing field. It shouldn’t be unfair.”
Ultimately, this experiment on the Korn Ferry Tour is a crucial step. It’s showing that the problem isn’t just a perception; it’s a reality. And for the first time, the slowpokes are being held accountable. Whether this translates to the PGA Tour remains to be seen, but if they want to keep fans engaged and the game moving, they might want to pay attention. Because nobody wants to spend their weekend watching guys take an hour to play two holes. It’s bad enough having to wait for your own friends to find their balls in the woods.
If you’re looking to improve your own golf game and maybe shave a few seconds off your own rounds, consider checking out some resources on golf etiquette and practice drills. Understanding the fundamentals can make a big difference not just to your score, but to the enjoyment of everyone on the course. For instance, learning how to properly manage your time between shots can be a game-changer, and there are plenty of excellent guides available online, like those found on Golf Distillery, which offers a wealth of advice for golfers of all levels.