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The PGA Tour's new pace-of-play policy will go
into effect April 16 for the first round of the RBC Heritage at
Hilton Head, S.C., and in addition to the increased monetary
punishment, it will have stroke penalties that are expected to
be handed out more often.
The tour's new "Observation List" now will target individual
players instead of punishing slow groups. ShotLink data will be
used over a 10-tournament rolling period. Players who take
longer than a 60-second average to hit shots will be placed on
the new watch list.
The watch list will not be made public, but individual players
will be notified if they are on it.
Players also will be monitored to see if they take more than 120
seconds to hit a shot. A violation would result in an "Excessive
Shot Time" penalty.
While the previous penalty for a shot-time violation was $5,000,
new penalties could be raised to as much as $50,000.
"We felt we needed to ratchet up the deterrence," the PGA Tour's
chief of operations Tyler Dennis said. "We've significantly
upped the ante on stroke penalties. Currently it's by the round;
now it's going to be over the entire tournament. It's more
likely that a player could find themselves in this situation."
The second-tier Korn Ferry Tour also will adopt the new
pace-of-play rules later this year.
"I love it," PGA Tour standout Zach Johnson said. "We're
proactive. That's the first thing. To be perfectly honest with
you, the policy that's in place has not changed and it will not
change, but there is kind of like a tangent arm to that that's
going to help facilitate and I think try to make the game a
little bit quicker."
--Field Level Media
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