During Friday’s round at the PGA Championship, cameras caught Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley in an animated discussion with a rules official, with the broadcast informing viewers that the two (along with Cameron Young) were put on the clock. It was a curious sight, especially since pace of play was slow throughout the field in Round 2, the byproduct of extremely tough pin positions and constant wind.
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Following his second straight one-under round, Thomas was asked what happened during the interaction, confirming the group was put on the clock and that they didn’t agree with it.
“It’s hard because it’s kind of the whole time par thing. What is time par? How can time par on this course be the same when it’s blowing 25 and the pins are tough than if it’s not?” Thomas asked. “And does time par change every day? There’s just so many factors that go into it.
“We were behind. I’m not – I think that wasn’t our issue or being annoyed by it, it’s just the fact that we weren’t holding up the group behind us. They were about – it seemed like every time we were on the green, they were on the tee and so on and so forth.
“The hard part to me with the whole pace of play thing is that you, there’s so much that goes into golf and there’s so much that goes into hole to hole in terms of, are you hitting it close, are you able to tap it in, or you have to mark it, stuff like that, to where, are you holding the group up or are you not, to where it’s very hard to make that call. And we just didn’t agree with it, to be honest.”
Thomas said they were taken off the clock and within a hole were caught up. “It kind of goes to our point of why we didn’t think we should of, but it is what it is. It’s a part of it,” he explained.
Thomas said he and the group didn’t do anything differently, even joking that he backed off his first shot after being told to hurry up.
“It’s just, it’s so hard out here, and that’s the last thing I’m going to do is make a mistake because I feel like I’m rushing,” Thomas said. “If we were, for some reason, to get in a position where I was getting, we were getting bad times and we were continuing to be on, I would have had more discussions with the rules officials to kind of plead my case. But that was – it’s hard enough – I’m not going to sit out there and take two minutes, like that’s disrespectful to the field and everybody.”
