PGA Tour to clamp down on pace of play in 2020

The PGA Tour have followed the European Tour’s suit by confirming that they have approved modifications to their pace-of-play policy, something that will likely come into effect in the second quarter of 2020.

Keith Pelley and the European Tour took the lead in August with their four-point plan and the slim details that we have from the game’s biggest tour is that theirs will be along similar lines.

First up there will be an “education process with the PGA Tour’s membership” and one source said that the adjustments were “not drastic” and more targeted towards individual players.

Much like the European Tour who, in among their brave new world, will encourage their referees to be proactive in focusing on known slow players who aren’t out of position. So, given that nearly every player in the game, will name the same select few as the ones slowing everyone else down things should become a little clearer.

The day after Keith Pelley unveiled the European Tour’s new guidelines, which will come into force on January 1, the PGA Tour’s commissioner Jay Monahan explained that their slow-play review had begun in February and was based on data collected from their ShotLink technology to see where the problem areas were most likely.

• European Tour pace-of-play experiment
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Monahan explained then that, much like the European Tour, smaller fields in opposite-field tournaments and reduced cut sizes were ways forward.

All of this has of course been happening for years but, given the way of the world and the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and JB Holmes being called out on Twitter, it can’t now be ignored as it has been routinely in the past.

“The problems are identified earlier, and they’re identified by more people, and the solutions sometimes are more complicated to get to,” Monahan said. “I feel really good about where we’re going to get to, but it takes longer than you want, and you can’t be overly reactionary.”

Much like the problem itself it’s slow progress but it’s one step in the right direction and, all around the world, the game’s great and good will be thinking a bit more about their pre-shot routines and everything else.