In remarks made to the media on Tuesday at the Players Championship, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan stated that the tour will begin publishing “speed-of-play-related statistics” later this year. These will include listing names and data on individual players, both fast and slow.
“This is not done from the standpoint of negativity,” he said. “There’s also a really positive element to this. … I think it’s really telling when you look at the people on our boards, there’s a lot of shaking of heads and understanding this is an area where we need to improve.”
Although the exact details aren’t yet clear, and there is no specific timeline for its implementation, this represents a significant change in tour policy. Shotlink data gives them precise analytics on average player stroke time, including field rankings—Ryan Fox was the fastest player at both Mexico Open and the Cognizant Classic, for instance—but until now this has only been shared with players privately.
The concept of releasing tour pro names and data publicly is to serve as a deterrent to the slowest players. Call it peer pressure or public shaming, but it has clearly garnered enough support from the players themselves to be shared with the average fan. Earlier on Tuesday, Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa expressed support for the idea.
“I think it should be released,” Morikawa said. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want it to be released. … I think what is there to hide, right? If you’re slow, you know you’re slow. If you don’t know, then there’s an issue. To me, there’s no issue with letting it out. It’s only going to make things better because then you’re either going to have a target on you, put a little more pressure and hopefully you pick it up, or you get penalised. Like it’s very simple.”
“It definitely is [something I support],” Thomas added. “It’s something I’ve said, if we put it in the locker room or put it out, which would obviously end up getting out, but nobody wants to be known as that. I mean, I’m the first to admit I’m on the slow side of players. It bothers me, but I’ve talked to many officials about it. I want to know why I’m slow because obviously the first thing that any slower player thinks is that they’re not slow.”
The suggestion for this and other changes came from a speed-of-play working group that included Adam Schenk, Sam Burns and Jhonattan Vegas, along with tour officials. The meeting of the full board approved each of them, as did a meeting last week of the Player Advisory Council.
As Billy Schroder, the senior VP of Competition Special Projects, pointed out, identifying slow players isn’t the only possible function of the data. It can be used to compare a player’s pace to his own standard, potentially identifying how comfortable or uncomfortable he might feel in a given situation, or it can be used to determine the psychological effects of a hole like the island green at TPC Sawgrass, compared to a regular par 3. The possibilities are manifold, though improving the speed of the slower players remains the most critical function.
Monahan noted that none of this would be possible without player buy-in—the concept of publishing pace-of-play data, using rangefinders and stiffening penalties on the Korn Ferry Tour that could trickle upward to the PGA Tour all required approval from the players.
“I think there’s a real commitment from players across the board to make certain that we’re doing everything that we possibly can to improve,” Monahan said. “And these three steps are just a start.
“We’re listening to our fans and we’re responding,” he added, “and clearly this is something where they’d like to see improvement.”
