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The topic of slow play on the PGA Tour has become an increasingly hot topic of conversation in recent years, and it seems like the introduction of an official shot clock would be a relatively simple fix. However, Justin Thomas has shed some new light on why that particular change still hasn’t been instituted.
You don’t need to be a professional golfer to understand the frustration that comes with getting stuck behind a slow group (or with a slow player) during a round, and it’s only natural that guys who play in tournaments with millions of dollars on the line are less than thrilled with encountering situations that prevent them from getting into a rhythm.
Brooks Koepka sounded the slow play alarm on the PGA Tour years before he defected to LIV Golf, and while there are certainly plenty of offenders, Patrick Cantlay, Tom Kim, and Brian Harman have frequently been cited as the most egregious culprits thanks in no small part to their painfully deliberate preshot routines.
The PGA Tour has instituted rules designed to speed up the pace of play, and players are expected to take 40 seconds to hit the vast majority of shots once they arrive at their ball. However, the rule is very rarely enforced on the course, and golfers and fans alike have lobbied for a stricter approach to policing that particular aspect of the game to no real avail.
Major League Baseball addressed its own slow-play issue with the pitch clock that ruffled plenty of feathers when it was first introduced but has undoubtedly been a beneficial tweak. There is one golf league that harnesses a 40-second shot clock thanks to the TGL, but there was still none to be found when the 2025 PGA Tour season kicked off earlier this month.
Why? Well, Justin Thomas offered a peak behind the rule-making curtain earlier this week, as the PGA Tour veteran who joined the Player Advisory Council last year implied a shot clock could do more harm than good thanks to the relatively minimal impact he seems to think it would have.
Here’s what he had to say about the matter via Sports Illustrated:
“The thing is you have to make such drastic changes for it to be noticeable. Pretty much a lot of the conversations end the same way; it’s like, what are we trying to accomplish here? Are rounds going to be 12 minutes faster? Are they going to be 20 minutes faster?
It’s hard to realistically make a big enough difference where people are like, ‘Wow, this is great, rounds are only three hours now or three and a half hours instead of five.’ You know what I mean? It’s really hard to make that big of a change…
[Fans] like harder golf courses, they like watching us play difficult places but they want us to play faster, so those two don’t go together. You’ve kind of got to pick and choose your battles.
It does seem like the PGA Tour is eventually going to have to do something to address pace of play, but it doesn’t sound like it’s currently a huge priority.