PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Driven by the Fan Forward initiative and a steady drumbeat of criticism over slow play on the PGA Tour, commissioner Jay Monahan announced Tuesday aggressive adjustments to the circuit’s pace-of-play policy.
In his annual address to the media at The Players Championship, Monahan outlined the new initiatives that include the publishing of “speed-of-play-related statistics” and the testing of a new policy on the Korn Ferry Tour that will include penalty strokes for pace-of-play violations.
“I think what’s important is when you go back to the commentary that you’ve heard around Fan Forward and you just look at the commentary generally, we’re listening to our fans and we’re responding, and clearly this is something where they would like to see improvement,” Monahan said.
“You know, it’s easy to identify the problem. It’s a little bit harder to find the solution, just given the depth and breadth of everything that goes into pace of play. But we are committed to finding the right solutions and making progress on that front.”
Monahan said the policy board supports the changes as well as the members of the Player Advisory Council during a meeting last week. The plan also includes testing range finders during competition rounds at six Tour events, between the Masters and the PGA Championship.
The move to make pace-of-play data available publicly is a dramatic pivot for the Tour, which has resisted singling out slow players for decades despite little improvement in the overall pace on Tour.
“The conversation that we had with our board, the conversation we’ve had with our player directors, looking at average stroke times, this is not done so from the standpoint of negativity; there’s also a really positive element to this,” Monahan said.
“They’re celebrating the players that are playing faster and improving, and at the same time there’s giving players the information that they need to have to be able to improve in the eyes of not only how they’re competing but also in the eyes of our fans.”
