EVANS, Georgia — For a second consecutive year, past champion Anna Davis was hit with a devastating penalty at the fifth edition of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. This time it was for slow play, and once again, she missed the cut.
Davis played alongside tournament leader Lottie Woad and Maria Jose Marin in the second round at Champions Retreat and was notified several times during the round that her group was out of position, said rules committee chair Jim Hyler in a tournament statement.
Davis, 18, received her first bad time after hitting her second shot on the fifth hole, and her second bad time after hitting her second shot on the 17th. She was assessed a one-stroke penalty, that was applied on the 17th hole, resulting in a bogey.
Davis shot 6-over 78 on a blustery day and finished at 4 over for the tournament, missing the cut by one stroke. The top-30 players and ties advance to the final round on Saturday at Augusta National Golf Club.
Some time after the round, a tearful Davis emerged from the clubhouse on Thursday afternoon with her father but was too emotional to talk to a group of reporters, though she did flash a smile. It was still too raw.
Just yesterday, Davis was laughing with reporters about the cards that were passed out on Wednesday morning explaining the rules for preferred lies.
Last year, Davis suffered a four-stroke penalty after she twice picked up the ball from the rough to start the first round. The rule restricts the use of preferred lies to “areas cut to fairway height or less.” She missed the cut by two strokes last year.
Davis, who couldn’t help but laugh when she saw the cards, talked earlier in the week about how much she has grown since winning the ANWA as a 16-year-old bucket-hat-wearing sensation. Winning at Augusta at such a young age, and then playing in several LPGA majors as a result, forced her to grow up a little faster, she said.
“I think I have seen myself grow,” said the Auburn freshman on Tuesday. “Just especially with the situation last year. I think how I handled it was good, and I think if you put me in that situation a few years ago it would’ve been a little different.
“I think if I was put in that situation now, I would handle it better than I did last year.”
Little did she know that another tough lesson would come so quickly.
A 40-second shot clock will aim to slow play in the tech-infused golf league led by Tiger and Rory.
Like a leaking faucet, the slow drip of news from Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s new tech-infused golf league continued on Monday with more updates to its unique format.
Last week, TGL released its competition format, but this week the league announced that matches would feature a shot clock, timeouts and a referee. That’s right, slow play haters, a shot clock is coming to golf.
Players will have 40 seconds to hit a shot, or else a shot clock violation will incur a one-stroke penalty. Each team will have four timeouts per match, two for each session of play. Similar to the NFL, there is no rollover of unused timeouts, and teams cannot call consecutive timeouts during a single shot.
The league also stated a referee “with experience with timeouts, shot clocks, and the dynamics of team sports” will be on hand, which would hint at a basketball referee. A rules of golf official will also be in a booth to monitor the action. The referee and booth official will be responsible for managing and enforcing the shot clock.
“Instituting a shot clock and timeouts will help make matches entertaining, fast-paced, and exciting for sports fans,” said Mike McCarley, CEO and founder of TMRW Sports and TGL. “These elements also add another level of strategy for the players in how they approach team decisions similar to other sports,”
Six teams of four PGA Tour players will compete in 15 regular season matches, starting Jan. 9, 2024, followed by semifinals and finals matches all at a high-tech short-game complex that was purpose-built on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Florida.
The two competing teams will name their three players ahead of each match, and all six will be mic’d up during the competition. While some teams have already been announced, full team rosters, names, brands and front-office staff will all be announced later this year.
Nelly Korda is grouped with Lydia Ko and Charley Hull for the first two rounds of the 2023 AIG Women’s Open in Walton Heath in Surrey, England.
And that’s quite alright with Korda.
“I love Charley, she’s so much fun to be around. I love playing with her. I’ve played a couple practice rounds with her. We’re pretty friendly,” she said during her Wednesday pre-tournament news conference. Then Korda touched on another important aspect of Hull’s game.
“She’s a fast player. I enjoy that.”
Slow play is an on-again, off-again subject in the game at all levels. Just two weeks ago, Carlota Ciganda was docked two strokes for slow play at the previous LPGA major, the Amundi Evian Championship. She was officially disqualified from the event after signing an incorrect scorecard when she refused to acknowledge the two-stroke penalty.
“I think at the end of the day, the Rules of Golf are the Rules of Golf and they should be enforced,” Korda said. “I really like Carlota. She’s a great person. I enjoy playing with her. I am a fast player, but I would say at the end of the day the Rules of Golf are the Rules of Golf, and it’s good that it’s being enforced.”
She said it can “throw off your rhythm as a golfer” to play with slow golfers. It can also be a drag for fans.
“I think it should be monitored. I mean, if I’m being honest, if I was a spectator and I was out here for 5 ½ hours to 6 hours, you know, it’s tough to watch, right. You want to watch a sport that’s continuously moving and not continuously stalling.”
Carlota Ciganda, a two-time winner on the LPGA and a five-time member of the European Solheim Cup team, was disqualified after the first round of the 2023 Amundi Evian Championship, the fourth LPGA major of the season.
The official reason was for signing an incorrect scorecard, but the situation arose out of a slow-play penalty assessed on Ciganda’s final hole of the round. The Spaniard refused to acknowledge a two-shot penalty, signed her card without adding the two shots, then was DQ’d.
Ciganda was 3 over after her round, not counting the penalty strokes. The penalty would have pushed her score to 5-over 76, and she would have trailed first-round leader Paula Reto by 12 shots.
Ciganda was playing with fellow Arizona State alum Anna Nordqvist as well as Celine Herbin. Officially Group 14, the threesome started on the 10th hole Thursday at Evian Resort Golf Club in Evain-Les-Bains, France.
When they got to the seventh hole, their 16th hole of the day, they were notified by rules officials that they were out of position.
After failing to make up time, the group was put on the clock on the eighth hole, their 17th of the round. On the ninth hole, Ciganda took too long to play and was assessed a two-stroke penalty per the LPGA’s pace of play policy.
As was her right, she appealed to the advance and lead rules officials but was denied, meaning the two-stroke penalty would stick. She opted to sign her scorecard without accounting for those two strokes. Ciganda was told if she left the official recording area having turned in a signed incorrect scorecard, she would be disqualified. The LPGA said she left of her own accord, leading to the DQ.
An LPGA spokesperson told Golfweek: “Rule 3.3b(3) states that if a returned score is lower than the actual score, the player is disqualified from the competition. The exception to this Rule does not apply because Ciganda was aware of the penalty strokes received and upheld before signing her scorecard and leaving the recording area.”
Ciganda tied for 12th in her most recent event, the Dana Open, following a tie for 20th at the U.S. Women’s Open and a tie for third at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. She ranks 14th on this year’s money list with $876,447, and she is No. 31 in the Rolex Women’s World Rankings. She won both her LPGA titles in 2016.
The slow-play police finally handed out a ticket on Saturday.
England’s Richard Bland was hit with the first slow-play penalty on LIV Golf during the second round of the tournament at Valderrama Golf Club in Spain.
At the 217-yard, par-3 15th hole, Bland took too long to play his tee shot. Here’s the explanation via a statement from LIV.
“In round two, the group of Dean Burmester, Sergio Garcia and Richard Bland were officially warned by a rules official after their 4th hole of the day (hole 8) where the group was out of position on the golf course as well as behind in relation to time par,” the release said. “After their 9th hole of the day (hole 13) the group, who had further lost position on the course, was officially timed by a rules official. In accordance with the LIV Golf League Pace of Play Policy, ‘A player has 40 seconds to play each stroke, with an additional 10 seconds if they are the first to play any stroke in the group.’
“On the tee of the 15th hole, Richard Bland, who was first to play, received a time of 84 seconds for his first stroke. This exceeded the allotted time per the policy. Bland was immediately notified by an official and assessed a one-stroke penalty. With the one-stroke penalty, Bland’s score of 4 on the par-3 15th hole resulted in a score of 5.”
Slow play penalties are rare on the PGA Tour. Jon Catlin, who plays regularly on the DP World Tour, was the most recent to be assessed one at the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah. But it has been under the spotlight this season despite pace of play being the scourge of the professional game for years. PGA Tour veteran Adam Hadwin noted that his wife, Jessica, called him out recently for his own slow play.
“[She said], ‘You look uncomfortable out there; you look like you’re deciding too much [and] taking too long,’” Hadwin told CBS during his post-round interview at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. “[She continued,] ‘It’s not just me. The fans in the crowd at LACC, apparently, were calling me out for it too.’”
Hadwin took note and on Saturday he tied the course record at Detroit Golf Club, shooting 9-under 63 to leap into contention for his second PGA Tour title.
“It’s not very pleasant to watch somebody stand over the ball for half an hour,” said Jack Nicklaus.
When Jack Nicklaus says slow play is a problem, you know the topic has officially jumped the shark.
Nicklaus was asked to opine on the pace of play of professional golf during a press conference on Saturday at The Woodlands in Houston ahead of competing in the Greats of Golf, a nine-hole exhibition played during the Insperity Championship on PGA Tour Champions.
“They do have a problem on the Tour today,” Nicklaus said. “The golf ball is a part of the problem. The longer the golf ball goes, the longer the courses get, the more you have to walk, the longer it’s going to take. I don’t think it’s good for the game. (The USGA and R&A have proposed) bringing the golf ball back (and reducing the distance it can travel). I think it’s a good start. It’s the first time they’ve done that in forever. We’ll see where it goes with that.
Nicklaus has long been a proponent of rolling back the golf ball but acknowledged that slow-play penalties are also overdue to be handed out.
“It’s got to be equitable,” Nicklaus added, “but they need to make an example and stay with it. It’s not very pleasant to watch somebody stand over the ball for half an hour.”
Slow play has made headlines recently after weather delays forced the Masters to go to threesomes and split tees in the final round and the glacial pace was exposed on TV. Brooks Koepka, who played in the final group, called out Patrick Cantlay, who also took his time on multiple occasions at the RBC Heritage the following week but pointed out that he was never put on the clock in either instances. Slow play has been a chronic problem in the game and rarely gets addressed in any meaningful way. But that wasn’t the case in Nicklaus’s rookie year.
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The Golden Bear always was a deliberate player but he learned early in his career that his pace of play was too slow. He was penalized two strokes during the second round at the 1962 Portland Open by PGA official Joe Black. Nicklaus still rolled to a six-stroke victory but he learned an important lesson that day.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Nicklaus said, noting that Black told him, “Jack, you can take as long as you want over the golf ball to play but be ready when it’s your turn.”
“I always tried to stay out of everybody’s way,” Nicklaus continued. “I didn’t want to bother anybody lining up my putt while they were lining up their putt so I stayed back. I didn’t want to start walking my yardages off. I took a while over the golf ball but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was being ready to play. I realized after playing on the Tour for a while that it’s also a courtesy to the field. It’s not fair to do that.”
Nicklaus also blamed caddies for being part of the problem.
“By the time they get through talking, I couldn’t hit a shot anyway,” he said. “It’s a problem.”
The Greats of Golf gathered on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Insperity Invitational and played a nine-hole exhibition. (Courtesy Insperity Invitational)
Gary Player echoed that sentiment. “It’s just not fair to the others to be taking the amount of time,” he said. “You are allocated a certain amount of time and you have to adhere to that or you should be penalized.”
Player noted that golfers have three practice rounds and then they spend too much time around the green doing Aim Point and studying their yardage books. “You didn’t see Bobby Locke, Ben Crenshaw or Tiger Woods doing that,” Player said.
“I read the green from 50 yards,” Lee Trevino added. “Keep staring at it while you’re walking you can see every curve on that green. Before you ever get there to read that putt you know exactly the direction it’s going.”
Annika Sorenstam said the problem with pace of play starts at the junior level.
“The juniors watch the pros and they see the Masters and see how much time the pros take and do the same thing,” she said. “I know the AJGA does a good job, but then they get to college and it all goes away and then they turn pro. I think it is a root problem from the beginning.
“Nobody enjoys it and it’s not fair. We’re running out of time, time is a precious commodity, right, so I think start at the very beginning and teach them to hit when you’re ready and go. The more we think, the more complicated it gets, right, so just hit and go.”
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Patrick Cantlay is no stranger to success at Harbour Town Golf Links.
Last year, he lost in a playoff to Jordan Spieth. He came into this year’s tournament in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, as one of the favorites, and he’s again near the top of the leaderboard, in large part thanks to his tee shot on the par-3 seventh hole.
Cantlay hit 6-iron to the middle of the green and it released toward the hole located near the back. The ball rolled and rolled and rolled and then dropped. Boom. It was Cantlay’s third ace of his PGA Tour career, this one coming in the second round of the RBC Heritage. It moved him to 8 under.
“It’s just a joke, isn’t it?” said reigning U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick of his round, which clocked in at 6 hours, 10 minutes.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – With apologies to the USGA’s sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open, the longest day of golf this year was the opening round of the 150th British Open at The Old Course.
“It’s just a joke, isn’t it?” said reigning U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick of his round alongside Tiger Woods and Max Homa, which clocked in at 6 hours, 10 minutes. “This just shouldn’t be happening ever in golf.”
Fitzpatrick nailed it, but he also conceded there was little to be done about it, given that with modern equipment seven of the par-4 holes are drivable, and the conditions had most everyone waiting on the tee to swing for the fences, often not even needing a club under a head cover.
“It’s the way the golf course is set up. It’s how firm it is. The way the golf course is designed. You’re crossing over a lot, and to get better angles and better lines, you’ve got to hit across all the fairways,” Fitzpatrick explained. “There’s nothing you can do unfortunately about it. It’s just sad more than anything. It’s just ridiculous.”
The morning wave turned in a brisk 5 hours and 30 minutes, by comparison. In the afternoon, there were some odd moments such as waving up Tiger’s group to tee off at the par-5 14th.
“Wait on the tee for a while and then they said we were going to hit up on them, and they let us drive, so, we hit our drive,” Homa said. “Then when we got up there, we waited 20 minutes for them to hit, which meant we had to wait another 20 after that for us to hit. It was very bizarre.”
Not just bizarre but the snail’s pace prevented players from finding any rhythm.
“I felt like everything was like choppy,” Homa said. “It was just an insane amount of waiting.”
The traffic jam got so bad that Homa’s group actually returned the favor and waved up the group of Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth and Harold Varner III at the 18th. At that point, were they really saving time? But this happened on several other holes, too, including the fifth, seventh, ninth and 12th.
Rory McIlroy was the most diplomatic when asked about the stop-start nature of the round.
“I think St Andrews is that way,” he said. “There’s a lot of crisscrossing and waiting on other greens and waiting on greens to clear because the drivable par-4s.
So I think, especially the first two days when it’s the full field, it’s to be expected. It is what it is. Thankfully it speeds up over the weekend and two balls, and it gets moving a little bit more. But I think playing this tournament, you expect it to be that way the first couple of days.”
McIlroy, who waited 20 minutes on the fifth tee, sounded like a man in a state of bliss after shooting a 66. The old Tiger-ism ‘It is what it is’ rings hollow in this case; it is what it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t get dark until after 10 o’clock here and there’s no reason for daylight to be an issue. Yet, still players finished in the gloaming in front of abandoned grand stands.
Six hour-plus rounds? That’s both insane and sad, and it needs to be fixed.
As Fitzpatrick put it, it should never happen in golf.
That’s what Tiger Woods said as he looked over a corner of Southern Hills Country Club. On Sunday. When only one other golfer was in sight and just a small gathering of fans was in step with him.
Woods was eyeing his crystal ball and seeing traffic jams at what is sure to be a crowded section of Southern Hills during the 104th PGA Championship.
Crowded? Think the 405 in Los Angeles, Times Square during tourist season.
That’s because all of the following are within a big pitching wedge of each other – the green at the par-4 second, the tee box at the par-4 third, the green of the par-5 fifth, the tee box and green of the par-3 sixth, and the tee box of the par-4 seventh.
Now add a large chunk of the expected 30,000 fans attending each day.
And the 156 players who have to pass through the congestion.
In other words, expect backups. And just imagine what it’s going to be like when the group of Woods, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth gradually rolls through it during the first two rounds.
World No. 6 Viktor Hovland said he expects play “to be really slow” in that region of the course. That’s because players will have to wait before hitting shots for other shots to land or be struck. For instance, the tee box of the third hole is between the tee box and green of the sixth hole. So, Player A is ready to hit his drive on the third but he has to make sure no one is hitting a tee shot on the sixth and no balls are landing on the second or fifth greens.
Got all that? Pace of play, which is already on the pedestrian side, could slow to a crawl in this region. And that’s not taking into account Mother Nature, who is expected to deliver 20-25 mph gusts in the first two rounds. That certainly won’t speed up matters.
“I was very surprised to see the tee box on 3 moved all the way back there,” Hovland said. “Depending on where you put the tee on 6, it doesn’t really interfere that much. You still probably have to wait a little bit. But especially that corner could be really slow. If they are playing it all the way back on all of those holes at the same time, then it could potentially be really slow. But if they mix up on maybe one of those holes, they put it up, then I don’t think it could be as bad.
“But I guess we’ll figure it out.”
Tyrrell Hatton said pace of play could be “stupidly slow.”
“They are going to have to be fairly careful with how they set the golf course up because of where some of the tee boxes are,” Hatton said. “The rounds could be just stupidly slow, which at the end of the day no one wants. You want to get around in a reasonable time. Hopefully, they’re fairly smart with how they do that.”
And what happens when there are backups?
“Chat with your caddie, maybe have a chat with your playing partners,” Hatton said. “There’s really not much else you can do. It’s not like we’re allowed to go on our phone and scroll through Twitter and Instagram and all of a sudden you’ve lost half an hour and then you’re ready to hit again like you can do if you’re just playing with your friends and it’s pretty slow.”
The No. 6 green and No. 7 tee at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Photo: Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
The tee box on the seventh hole could be home to long waits. And players dodging incoming missiles from the sixth tee. The sixth green and seventh tee box are so close that one could literally putt a ball off the sixth green to the seventh tee box without making a shoulder turn.
“It’ll be interesting with a back left pin on 6, in case somebody just tugs it,” said four-time major winner and two-time PGA champion Brooks Koepka. “We’re right in the firing zone. It is what it is. I can’t do anything about it.
“It’s the way the golf course is set up.”
Hovland said it could be downright unnerving.
“You don’t want to be thinking over the ball that, oh, is the ball going to land now, or now, or now,” he said. “You kind of want to get that out of the way and get ready for your shot.
“I’m sure the player on the tee would maybe communicate with a guy back on 6 tee to make sure he was going. But then that makes it go pretty slow. So we’ll see how that goes.”
Three-time major champion Jordan Spieth, who is looking to complete the career Grand Slam this week, mentioned two other sections of Southern Hills that could create chaos – the tee shot on the par-5 13th goes directly over the green of the par-4 12th, and the tee box of the par-4 fourth is within a chip shot of the tee box on the second hole.
“Major championship’s first two rounds play pretty slow,” said Spieth, who finished runner-up last week in the AT&T Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch outside of Dallas. “I’m assuming the PGA of America will set up the golf course where you have pins more on the front of the green when the tees are back to hit over part of the green just for pace of play purposes.
“Last weekend was remarkably slow. So I don’t think we’ll go any slower than we did last weekend, and so I think it’ll actually feel just fine. I think those boxes were created for us to hit it in the areas that the course was designed to hit it in, and we got two different wind directions. So to have multiple options for tees where we hit it to those areas and play the golf course the way it’s supposed to be played, they need to be there.
“I think there’s a way to do it, and they’ll figure it out.”
After a penalty for slow play, Maria Fassi said she found it difficult to keep her head in the game in the second half of her round.
JOHNS CREEK, Ga. – As Maria Fassi made the turn at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, she was informed that she had incurred a two-stroke penalty for slow play. The infraction occurred on the par-5 18th hole (her ninth) at Atlanta Athletic Club’s Highlands Course, and a rules officials approached her shortly before she teed off on the first.
Fassi, who is playing on a sponsor exemption, was so fired up that she cried down the hole. The former NCAA champ said she found it difficult to keep her head in the game after that.
“One of the players in our group was pretty slow,” said Fassi. “I’m not going to be pointing fingers; I did go over time. I guess that’s the penalty.”
Fassi, 23, tried to contest it after the round, but said that a rules official told her that she took 50 seconds on her second shot, which is 20 more than allowed.
Fassi had 180 yards left for her second shot into the closing par 5 and 167 to cover the water.
“The wind should’ve been helping,” she said, “but it didn’t feel like it was helping. I hit my 6-iron 183, my 7-iron 172. We didn’t know what to hit, because they had to be a perfect 7 for it to get there. The six could’ve been too much, and bunker long wasn’t good.
“It was just the perfect in-between number for me with those circumstances.”
Fassi, who shot 77 and is 3 over for the tournament (currently inside the cut line), was in breach of Rule 5.6 while being timed by a member of the Rules Committee.
“Every other LPGA player will tell you, we know who the slow ones are,” said Fassi, “everybody knows it. The rules officials know it, and I’m not one of them. This time around I guess it was me … I just don’t think that I deserved it.”
