Patrick Cantlay generated controversy at The Masters thanks to perceived slow play during the final round.
However, even though joint runner-up at Augusta National, Brooks Koepka, described the group Cantlay was in as “brutally slow,” he has not been without his supporters in the aftermath.
The latest to defend Cantlay is Michael Kim. The 2018 John Deere Classic champion pointed out on Twitter that Cantlay is far from the slowest player and suggested a novel way to persuade others to speed up. He wrote: “Y’all think Cantlay is slow… you should see some others… I think there should be a monthly report of the slowest players on @PGATOUR. Public shaming won’t work on Cantlay but might work on others."
Y’all think Cantlay is slow… you should see some others… 🤦🏻♂️ I think there should be a monthly report of the slowest players on @PGATOUR. Public shaming won’t work on Cantlay but might work on others.April 24, 2023
Kim's tweet came days after another PGA Tour pro, Byeong Hun An, also suggested plenty of others are guily of slow play. An tweeted: “It’s not fair for Cantlay to take all the blame for slow play because there are many slow guys who is just not on tv. It’s hard to tell them to hurry up if they are over the ball and not firing the trigger but i don’t get how it takes more than 45secs to choose what club to hit.”
Cantlay himself has alluded to the wider scale of the issue in recent weeks. Before he teed it up in the RBC Heritage, he responded to the slow play criticism he received at The Masters by saying: “We finished the first hole, and the group in front of us was on the second tee when we walked up to the second tee, and we waited all day on pretty much every shot. We waited in 15 fairway, we waited in 18 fairway. I imagine it was slow for everyone.”
Last week, Cantlay played again, this time in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Before that tournament, he admitted he is "definitely slower than average", but reiterated the point he’d made the week before, saying: “I don’t know how you would want even the groups that I’ve been in to play faster when our groups are in position and can’t go faster because the group in front of us is right in front of us."
Regardless of the scale of the issue, according to Kim, calling out Cantlay over his perceived slow play is unlikely to cut any ice in any case. Whether his suggestion to speed others up would have the desired effect remains to be seen.
