There is plenty to disagree about today in golf, whether it be the PGA Tour/LIV Golf situation, the debate over distance and equipment regulation, the way the professional game is presented to the masses.
You’ll get plenty of conjecture on those topics.
Perhaps there is one where we can all find common ground: slow play.
It is the issue that never seems to be tackled, and one that again was at the forefront of the weekend golf coverage, where Harris English’s victory at the Farmers Insurance Open was overshadowed by pace of play issues that caused a collective loss of mind.
Playing in the last group with Andrew Novak and Aldrick Potgieter, English took five hours and 29 minutes to play the Torrey Pines South course to defeat Sam Stevens by a stroke.
That languishing round—which it should not be pointed out is not the fault of the final group—came a week after a five-hour, 30-minute conclusion to the American Express in Palm Springs, Calif.
After the leaders took nearly three hours to play the first nine holes Saturday, CBS’s on-course reporter—in a discussion with analyst Frank Nobilo—noted the lagging final round, causing considerable reaction in the golf world.
“I think we’re starting to need a new word to talk about this pace of play issue, and it’s respect,” Pepper said on the air. “For your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasts, for all of it. It’s just gotta get better.”
.@Dottie_pepper PREACH 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 pic.twitter.com/BebcTDyHP7
— Joseph LaMagna (@JosephLaMagna) January 25, 2025
And with that, an issue that has plagued the game for years got some much-needed scrutiny from a broadcast partner.
Reached Sunday, Pepper made sure to point out that she wasn’t blaming the final group and was attempting to shine a light on an issue that goes well beyond the PGA Tour.
“In the last 24 hours, I’ve literally heard from people around the world,” Pepper says from Pebble Beach, where she will be working this week’s tournament for CBS. “This is not just a PGA Tour problem. It’s a golf problem. I think the focus over the last few hours was on that particular group but I heard from the lead official on the LPGA Tour. They are evaluating their pace-of-play policy. How do you come up with a structure? How do you get the players to buy in?
“I’ve heard from people at the R&A, college golf programs, others. It’s definitely not just the last group at the Farmers Insurance Open. When you drill right down to it, it’s a respect issue.”
Pepper noted how bad habits are formed at a young age, some through coaching, others via watching pros on TV.
She had her own enlightening moment years ago when she was still an active competitor on the LPGA Tour.
Pepper said she joined Loxahatchee in Jupiter, Fla., after she had moved to the area and quickly learned that the club had a pace-of-play policy that it enforced.
“I could have been faster as a player,” she says. “I actually asked the officials to help me out and where do I get better, how do I get better. And you start to put yourself on a time block.
“My big turning point was when I was at the club and they had a policy that was a hard four hours. That was walking with two caddies who were double-bagging it for four players. Usually the others were amateurs. And there was no problem getting around in four hours.
“But I couldn’t get around in five hours on the LPGA Tour with three players and three caddies? And it drove me bananas. This is everybody. It’s a systematic situation, not just the final group of a PGA Tour event. It’s across golf.”
Pepper more or less dismissed the idea of a shot clock, which might work in random events but is not viable across the entire Tour. She suggested, however, that it be experimented with in fall events or perhaps on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Another idea that is broached repeatedly is to simply enforce the rules in place. The PGA Tour has stroke penalties for various violations, but it takes a number of out-of-position issues and warnings before they ever occur—which basically means never.
Players who commit numerous violations are fined, but they are not announced.
Both the LPGA Tour and LIV Golf have stricter pace-of-play rules that result in swifter stroke penalties.
Pepper, who won 17 times including two major championships in her LPGA Tour career (and should be rewarded with a spot in the World Golf Hall of Fame), has had a role in broadcasting for the better part of 20 years, a good bit of it on the ground, seeing the various ways that play might be faster.
“My biggest suggestion is to be ready to hit the shot when it’s clearly your turn to hit the shot,” Pepper says. “Another suggestion is get the work done when you get to the golf ball. Don’t walk ahead to get yardages and then walk back. You can do that on the way to the ball. It’s just chewing up clock. If those things happen, we start to make a dent in the issue.”
Saturday’s conditions at Torrey Pines did not make matters any easier. The temperature was a cool 61 degrees, with steady winds that gusted up to 25 mph. That is not conducive to fast golf.
Nor is deep rough, fast greens and one of the harder courses players face early in the season.
Equipment advances, including clubs and golf balls, coupled with better agronomy, has led to an onslaught on scoring, which in turns leads to officials attempting to set up courses with deeper rough, more difficult pins and faster greens.
All of that leads to more time.
“It’s not going to happen instantly,” Pepper says. “But you can take steps to set a better pace of play early in the day. A balance of course setup. And I think every organization can look at stroke penalties in some way.
“I don’t think you can lose the balance of having simpler setups over more stringent ones. I don’t think you take the U.S. Amateur or tournaments to simple venues. That’s just silly. But we need better policies across the board.”
Things certainly don’t look to get any easier this week.
The PGA Tour heads to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which is notoriously one of the slowest tournaments in golf, the rounds complicated with the amateur format.
No doubt, this is an issue that won’t be solved quickly, a word that seems all too elusive these days.
Back to St. Andrews
Unlike the other major championships that rotate venues from year to year, the R&A, which runs the British Open has not announced tournament sites well into the future.
In fact, until last week, only this year’s tournament at Royal Portrush and next year’s at Royal Birkdale had been announced.
So it wasn’t a surprise that the R&A anointed the Old Course at St. Andrews to come back just five years after Cam Smith’s victory in 2022. Prior to the pandemic, the home of golf had been mostly on a five-year rotation dating all the way back to 1990. It was to be played six years after its most recent one in 2021 to commemorate the 150th playing of the championship but was pushed back a year when the 2020 tournament was canceled.
And yet, there had been some conjecture that the R&A might not stage the Open at St. Andrews until 2030, with plenty of other viable candidates to choose from, including Muirfield, which has not hosted the championship since Phil Mickelson’s victory in 2013.
The club was briefly taken out of the rota when it voted against adding women members, which has now become mandatory to be one of the courses considered. That issue was resolved and Muirfield is back in play, although it has now been passed over among the Scottish venues several times.
Since Muirfield last hosted in 2013, the tournament has twice been played at Royal Troon (2016, 2024), Carnoustie (2018), Royal Portrush (2019, 2025 in Northern Ireland) and the Old Course will see a third playing during that time.
It is possible that the R&A stages another Open in Scotland in 2028, which could then be Muirfield.
But the organization also has financial considerations and it is clear that St. Andrews, Royal Liverpool Royal Birkdale and now Royal Portrush are among its biggest moneymakers. Attendance was disappointing during Mickelson’s victory.
Then again, Muirfield is one of the game’s great courses, and going back there seems imperative.
Seth Waugh on Ryder Cup and LIV Golf
The issue of pay for the U.S. Ryder Cup players is not going away, even though it might very well be that the players end up donating all of the $500,000 that the organization will now give them in the form of a $300,000 charitable fee and $200,000 for them to do with what they want.
“I understand why they did it. I don't think I would have done it,” said Seth Waugh, who left the organization as CEO last June.
Waugh made his comments to Golfweek in a lengthy interview last week.
“If you take any lesson in the last few years, the world is tired of talking about money,” Waugh said. “Golf was supposed to be playing for a higher purpose. That's what the Ryder Cup signifies, you know? And because we give 20% of our television rights to the PGA Tour already, we are paying the players. We’re paying all the players, not just 12. I don't think it's gonna change their lives because it's not a big enough number to matter to them. They can monetize their participation in a way that blows away whatever you can pay them. And I just think for the players to ask to be paid for it is kind of a bad look.”
Waugh was referring to the fact that the PGA Tour gets money over the course of the TV contract. It amounts to roughly $6 million or so per year or $12 million per Ryder Cup. In theory, that money can benefit all players, a message that has not been articulated well.
Among many other subjects, Waugh also commented on the slow progress in the negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia—and how he’s not impressed by the LIV Golf product.
“I'm surprised it's taken as long as it has,” Waugh said. “It's complicated, but I've done a lot of complicated things that haven't taken this long. That part of it is sort of indefensible. I think there will be a deal for a couple fundamental reasons ... LIV is a failed economic experiment. Disruption needs one of two things, hopefully both: you need a better product or you need better pricing.
“No way you can say they're a superior product and they have no pricing because there's no economics. It's not sustainable. I don’t care how much money you have, burning it doesn’t feel very good. And I don't see any way out for them. I don't see light at the end of the tunnel where it's gonna transform that league. So they need a deal. And then the Tour needs one as well. SSG, the new owners, need one.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dottie Pepper Despises Slow Play, But She Has Ideas for Fixing Golf's Big Problem.
