Speed check: Will new rules help pace?

Rangefinders and quicker penalties on the tour table; Stray Shots: Masters mania

Bob MacIntyre’s caddie Mike Burrows legally checks yardage with measuring device.(Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

Why does the PGA Tour — or should I say its members — feel the need to coddle slow play?

Since the beginning of time, golf has had a pace-of-play issue, and no one has wanted to effectively address it for whatever reason.

This issue arose again this week because the PGA Tour is testing electronic distance measuring devices to ascertain if their use will speed up play. The use of rangefinders has been allowed in the PGA Championship since 2021 and has not demonstrated any change in playing speed, but this the first time the PGA Tour has allowed it starting at this week’s RBC Heritage.

Is that a silly question? Of course, for some players and in certain situations, like hitting it well off the beaten line, a measuring device might help speed up play.

“This gives them that extra tool in their toolbox. Should they start to fall behind, they can quickly get a reference point and calculate yardage. It may also help the groups that are being timed keep up and make up time,” said Gary Young, senior vice president for rules and competitions for the PGA Tour and on Pace of Play Work Group.

The other part of this experiment addresses the penalty for slow play.

According to Young, a new penalty-stroke regime will be implemented for the Korn Ferry Tour but not the PGA Tour.

Under the current system, the officials warn the group of their slow play. If they don’t speed up, the group is put on the clock. If a player gets a bad time, that player is notified, and the player will get a penalty for the next bad time.

The new system will penalize the player on the first bad time.

While all this seems so civilized, it does little to speed up play, and even with the new penalty system, there is much ado about nothing.

According to Young, the tour averages one or two bad times every two weeks. “It’s not as common as you would think,” Young said. “I would say less than a bad time per week on tour.”

So, let me get this straight: The PGA Tour is implementing a four-week experimental program and changing the slow-play penalty system to potentially apply up to a single stroke penalty per tournament?

One single stroke per tournament?

Either the pace-of-play schedule is inaccurate, or the PGA Tour doesn’t actually have a slow-play issue.

But assuming it does have a slow-play issue, why wait to implement the new system?

The Fan Favorite survey brought slow play to the PGA Tour’s attention. But they don’t seem all that interested in addressing it, but instead seem more interested in pretending they are doing something when they have no intention of addressing the real issues of slow play.

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Rory McIlroy put on quite the show at Augusta National (Joel Marklund/ANGC)

Stray Shots: Just another manic Masters

By Peter Kaufman

1. The 2025 Masters: It was as exciting a Sunday as Augusta National can offer — which is saying something. There is much to be said for star wattage in any field, and Sunday opened up with incandescence: Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau — the two protagonists from the 2024 U.S. Open — in the last pairing. Rory started 12imder and Bryson 10-under.

On the chase were Corey Conners (8-under), Patrick Reed and Ludvig Åberg (6-under) and a slew at 5-under, including world No. 1 and defending champion Scottie Scheffler and Justin Rose.

Everyone presumed it was a two-horse race, figuring Conners would eventually evaporate and everyone else was likely too far back to possibly get in the mix. The two horses at the lead are the most charismatic in golf (sorry Scottie) and charisma sells.

And it sold. According to Sport Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter citing CBS, the final round of the Masters drew 12.7 million viewers, up 33 percent from 2024 and the most-watched since 2018 (winner Patrick Reed). The number peaked at “an insane” 19.5 million between 7-7:15 p.m. “If you go back 25 years, this would rank 14th overall, but among the strongest without Tiger,” Carpenter said.