Major champion brands slow play a “huge, huge problem”

Slow play.

It’s all that anybody in golf is talking about at the moment.

The subject has completely dominated the start of the new PGA Tour season, with players, commentators and fans alike calling for the circuit’s supremos to clamp down on it once and for all.

Major winner Webb Simpson is the latest to go public on the issue.

In an appearance on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio, the former US Open champion made his feelings abundantly clear, going so far as to point to a potential solution.

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“It is a huge problem,” said Simpson. “I can’t stress that enough. It is a huge problem.

“We should not be playing threesomes in five hours, let alone five hours and ten minutes.  We should be four hours twenty, four hours thirty at the most.

“If we reduce our total timeout in the golf course, it helps everyone involved. It helps us players, because there’s a better flow. We’re not standing around with our backs are getting tight. It helps the fans on-site, because they see more a better flow. They see more golf shots in a shorter amount of time. And obviously, it helps our our TV partners, who can show more shots.

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“When they show a guy who they think is about to hit, but he takes another minute and a half, you know, that’s kind of on the players, not really on the TV, and so they suffer as well.”

As a member of the PGA Tour’s Policy Board, 39-year-old Simpson is better placed than most to influence change and he admits that it’s something he and his fellow office-bearers are “seriously looking at”.

“There’s a lot of ideas being thrown around,” he added, “but TGL has shown us that a shot clock does help. To implement that out here on the PGA Tour with every group, seems like a very big challenge, but it’s a challenge worth looking at.”

Michael McEwan is bunkered's Head of Content and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Head of Content