‘Fines are useless!’ – Collin Morikawa calls for major PGA Tour change

Collin Morikawa has urged the PGA Tour to expose its serial slow play offenders.

As the perennial pace of play topic rolled into Sawgrass ahead of The PLAYERS, Morikawa was asked whether the PGA Tour releasing its black book of data – which ranks players on their average stroke time – would be an effective deterrent for the game’s plodders.

The two-time major champion, a longtime advocate for more stringent penalties, was unequivocal on the epidemic that has come under more pressure in this attention economy.

“I think it should be released,” he replied. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want it to be released. After talking to some guys, I think you just have to start stroking guys and giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedEx Cup. What I’ve learned is that monetary fines are useless.

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“We make so much money, and some guys frankly could care less about – I don’t know how much the fines are, but whatever X amount they are, and I think they care more about playing good golf and making sure they make the [FedEx Cup] playoffs and making sure they make, you know, 70, 50, 30. That’s where it hits hard.

“What is there to hide, right? If you’re slow, you know you’re slow. I mean, if you don’t know, then there’s an issue. To me, there’s no issue with letting it out, right. 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 penalized. Like it’s very simple.”

Morikawa, however, asserted that we are still only dealing in marginal gains.

“But I think the fans need to realise that slow play is not going to fix – like if we pick up ten minutes of pace of play for this week, the fans won’t realise that at all,” he stressed. “Like zero. So that’s not the issue with watching golf.”

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Morikawa was reeling from one of the toughest defeats of his career on Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he was stunned by Russell Henley’s eagle-chip-in as he lost out by one.

The world No.4 is not one of the main slow play culprits, but likes to see himself as a “methodical” golfer. He conceded that there are also occasions where he will be perceived to be taking too long on TV broadcasts, such is the extensive process that goes into playing an approach.

“Last week they put out a clip of me, JJ [caddie Jonathan Jakovac] and I were hitting a shot,” Morikawa explained. I watched the video. It was like a minute 50 I think it took or a minute 45 until I hit the ball.

“I’m the first one to get to my ball. JJ has to walk off the number, and people are complaining like, ‘oh, hit the ball.’ I don’t just walk up to the ball. I mean, Ludvig [Aberg’s] one of the best, fastest players out there. He doesn’t just walk up to the shot and be like, all right, Joe [Skovron, Aberg’s caddie], this looks like a 7-iron. How far is it? It’s 175. All right, perfect, go.

“You still got to walk off our numbers. We still have to look at the pin. You got to look at the wind, and like, that’s part of the whole situation. Part of it is how they’re putting this out is sometimes they make us look slow.

“But there are guys out there that are taking a minute and a half, two minutes, when the camera is on them, on that putt, and it’s their turn, and it’s too long. That’s why we should release names.”

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.