McIlroy Wins McIlroy Amid Slow Play "PGA Tour, Must Be Fast"

McIlroy Wins McIlroy Amid Slow Play "PGA Tour, Must Be Fast"

Blog Article

"McIlroy's brilliant win in 'slow play'."

This is the BBC's evaluation of Rory McIlroy (Northern Ireland)'s victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA Tour on the 3rd. The BBC reported on the 4th that McIlroy won the title by hitting good shots even while the previous group players were playing slowly.

The final round kicked off at 10:15 a.m. local time. McIlroy's victory was confirmed in as many as five and a half hours after starting the final round. The championship group consisting of McIlroy, Shane Lowry of Ireland, and Sepp Straka of Austria faltered several times due to the slow proceedings of the previous group. "The issue of 'slow play' in the PGA Tour has been pointed out for a long time, but in reality, sanctions have rarely been imposed," the BBC said. "The new method introduced at the recent English amateur championships can be the solution."
The English Golf Association has been implementing a system called "Pace of Play Stations" since last year. It checks the speed of players' progress at certain points on the course. Its main goal is to ensure that even if three players play in a group, the round time does not exceed 4 hours and 30 minutes. "Players have come to realize that they should not only care about the time it takes for them to hit a shot, but also consider the overall flow of the game," said James Krafton, director of the English Golf Championship.

Under the new system, a warning (a kind of "yellow card") is issued for exceeding the set time in a certain section. If there is a delay afterwards, the penalty will be applied to all players in the group. BBC reported that "no player has actually been punished since the introduction of the system, but some players have been seen running fairways to match checkpoints."

Currently, DP World Tour (formerly European Tour) and LIV Golf are actively applying regulations to enable relatively fast operation of games. In contrast, the PGA Tour is still neglecting players' slow play. CBS commentator Dottie Pepper recently criticized slow play, saying, "Slow play brings unpleasant experiences not only to players but also to fans. Not considering speed of play is a lack of respect for sports."

One solution is for two players to play in the final round, not three players. In the English amateur tournament, 50-minute breaks were allocated between morning and afternoon rounds to smoothly adjust the flow of the game. BBC predicted, "Although it will not be easy to introduce this directly in the PGA Tour, active use of a system such as Face of Play Station can speed up the progress of the game." "Our goal is to induce players to proceed with their routines quickly and maintain the overall speed of the game," Krafton said. "We need to consider this approach in the PGA Tour as well."

"Slow play" is one of the main factors that make fans less interested in golf. No matter how great the game is, if the duration of the game is too long, the emotions will be halved. BBC pointed out that in order for golf to become a more dynamic sport, practical sanctions and improvement measures are needed to speed up the game. 먹튀검증