Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood were given ‘bad times’ for playing too slowly at the BMW PGA Championship.
The English pair were judged to have taken longer than the permitted time for a stroke at Wentworth, according to European Tour Group committee member David Howell.
A bad time is administered when a player takes longer than 40 seconds to play a shot while being monitored, or 50 seconds if they are first to play in the group.
Another bad time would have led to a penalty, and despite these instances involving two of golf’s most popular players, fans will no doubt welcome a crackdown on what is one of the sport’s most incendiary crimes.
“Two people got bad times, two that I know of, and they were Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood,” Howell told NCG, who is a tournament committee director on the DP World Tour (DPWT).
“The only two people were two of our highest profile players. That’s just to make sure that people are aware we’re not mollycoddling the superstars. Our officials are amazing – whether you’re Joe Blow or Rory McIlroy, if you’re over time, you’re over time. It’s just the way it is.”
Howell, a two-time Ryder Cup winner with Team Europe, believes slow play is discussed more than any subject at board-level on tour. After all, it’s a debate as old as time at every level of the game.
The tour hasn’t been shy in dishing out punishment in 2026. In May, Gregorio de Leo was penalised when contending in the final round of the Turkish Airlines Open – he ended up tied for seventh.
While Howell believes there is a limit to how fast a round can go with big fields such as at the BMW PGA Championship, the Englishman outlined the DPWT has identified the main perpetrators and the issue is dealt with more strictly than people might realise.
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“We certainly did have the most stringent sanctions of all the tours,” Howell added. “The PGA Tour might be catching up, so I don’t want to dismiss what they’re doing. They’re blessed with amazing data from their ShotLink system.
“We’ve been giving shot penalties out to people for a number of years now. I think at least two people have had one- or two-shot penalties this year for slow play for exceeding their times. We’re strong on it.
“The tour has been very strong on acknowledging that round times can’t come down a lot. They just can’t. But there are some players who are much slower than the others and are always the problem. Those players have been targeted and the regulations make their world quite uncomfortable, so we do way more than most people think.
“No one likes playing slowly on tour,” he added. “That being said, there are limits to how fast we can play by the way we set the tournaments up, big fields.
“Thursday and Friday (at Wentworth) were just under five hours, having already signed their cards,” he added.
“You can’t go around much quicker. That doesn’t sound quick, but it’s a two-tee start. You can’t do it in any less than four and a half hours. It’s an impossibility because we put so many people on the course.”
What is the DP World Tour’s pace of play policy?
According to the DP World Tour’s pace of play policy (DPWT), a player can take 40 seconds to play a stroke, and 50 seconds if they are first in the group to hit.
If a referee observes a player to be taking longer than the above times to hit a shot while they are initially being monitored or timed, they incur a bad time. Bad times are carried forward for the remainder of the tournament, and a second bad time leads to a stroke penalty.
A third one adds a two-stroke penalty, and a fourth is disqualification. Timing sessions are accumulated throughout the season, and players can receive fines and be added to the tour’s Watch List.
As well as the example of de Leo on the DPWT, the LPGA Tour also made a significant crackdown in the same month, when Arpichaya Yubol was docked a shot for taking too long on the 13th hole in the second round of the LPGA ShopRite. She finished one shot behind winner Celine Boutier.
While there is never-ending clamour for the book to be thrown at players for taking too long, slow-play penalties aren’t entirely uncommon.
Slow play at the highest level has many moving parts, such as field size, weather conditions and crowd movement at the biggest events. Even so, the loudest detractors don’t let those variables excuse players from their responsibility to keep things moving.
The tour has its policy, as do the PGA Tour and the R&A, but Howell, a five-time DPWT winner, believes slow play could also be tackled by looking more closely at what players are allowed to do before hitting a shot.
“Does golf take too long? What’s making golf take a long time? I personally hate the line on the ball when they’re putting,” Howell added.
“I don’t like that. I don’t think pros should be able to do that. I think it’s a bit weird that we can do it.
“You can always line the manufacturer’s name up, but the way they’re doing it – it doesn’t look very athletic. It’s not very skilful. I don’t like that. I think AimPoint feeds into that. People say that AimPoint is quicker; I’m not sure I concur with that. I think it also looks awful.
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“Maybe you can only put it down once – you certainly can’t readjust it.”
David Howell: Slow play is talked about on tour, but what about club level?
The issue isn’t limited to tour players; it exists at club level, too. In a recent survey from Golfshake, 74% of respondents said ‘slow play was their biggest frustration, narrowly ahead of handicap manipulation’. Given the growing antipathy towards WHS, even just on these very channels, that is quite the finding.
In 2024, England Golf trialled checkpoints at their championships, which saw groups timed at various points during their round, and no slow play penalties were given. This system has been adopted full-time as a result of its success.
At club level, there is a balance to be struck. Players do not enjoy waiting, but equally enjoy spending their weekends in the outdoors without feeling rushed.
Although Howell sits on a committee headstrong on tackling slow play, he pondered if players have an incentive to play fast, and whether grassroots hackers appreciate the factors exclusive to professional golf that inevitably make rounds longer.
“The amateur game has got to look at itself and stop blaming the pros. It’s a different thing than pro golf. There are 20,000 people on the course, for goodness sake,” he said.
“If you hit up against an advertising hoarding, there are cameras everywhere. You can’t afford to break a rule or get a ruling wrong. You have to wait. That’s 10 minutes. By the nature of the beast, you can’t run around, added to the fact that you’ve flown all the way to China (for example) and you’ve got nowhere to go in the evening – there often isn’t an incentive for the pros.
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“You’re not rushing back to anyone or anything. You’re there for the purpose only, so you’ve got to play within a sensible time frame, which is what we’ve regulated for.
“Don’t worry about the pros. Club golf needs to be quicker, and ways to do that are as important as anything,” Howell added.
“I don’t play a lot of club golf anymore. But I also think it’s overplayed a little bit. It’s waiting to play golf that’s the problem. That often just comes about because people are not very good.
“That’s not their fault. We want them out there. If you’re a better player than the people in front, you’re going to be waiting because they’re looking for their balls and they’re having more shots. It’s human nature, isn’t it?
“How quickly do you want to play? If you want to play in three hours, you better go off at 7 in the morning. That can be just as annoying as well, the people that don’t want to be out there long.
“We’re always going to debate it, aren’t we?”
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