Editor's note: This story was originally published Feb. 5, 2025, on The First Call | Extra's Substack platform.
Welcome to Random Golf Thoughts — or RGT as it’s known to insiders at the Phoenix Open Margarita Classic.
For starters, shrinking the size of the PGA Tour fields won’t do anything about improving the pace of play and the results have already shown that. It’s not field sizes that are the main cause of slow play, it’s the distance these guys hit the ball.
You may have seen that at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Most players in the field were capable of reaching all four par-5s in two. That causes a backup on the tee. A short hole like the fourth, a par 4, is potentially drivable. Again, that causes a wait on the tee.
I have written many times, including recently, how the PGA Tour needs a shot clock to improve the pace of play. How about if we start with this: A shot clock with each pairing that comes without threat of penalty. But the length of time each player took to play a shot would be noted, posted and added as a category in the tour stats.
Shane Lowry showed at Pebble that he’s one of the fastest guns in the west. He was ready to hit as soon as the other player’s ball landed. Tom Kim, on the other hand, takes a while to pick a club and stands frozen over the ball quite a while before pulling the trigger.
My Fake Shot Clock, let’s call it, would provide actual data. Players like Kim might see the numbers, see where they rank on the tour and get tired of the derision for clearly being among the slowest players on Tour and do something about it.
Everybody talks about slow play. Maybe the 10 fastest players on the Tour should get bonus money and maybe the 10 slowest should pay a penalty. This Fake Shot Clock would be a baby step toward having a Real Shot Clock with real penalties. It has already been done once, the 2018 Shot Clock Masters on the European Tour and it was a popular success among players, knocking more than 30 minutes off the length of a round. You’re on the clock, PGA Tour.
THIS JUST IN
> I received the digital version of the Masters Media Guide today. The Masters Tournament is nine weeks away. Forget the groundhog. This guide is the first real sign that spring is coming.
> Saturday, Rory McIlroy vaulted into contention at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. After his round, he suggested that the PGA Tour needed better venues, although he singled out Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill as good ones.
“Sometimes, when you play a run-of-the-mill TPC or whatever, it just isn’t that interesting,” he said.
You know what’s not interesting, Rory? Watching tour players like yourself turn Pebble Beach into a par 67.5 course on a calm day. That drive over the tree on the corner at Pebble Beach’s par-5 14th hole, 330 yards-plus, and the 7-iron onto the green and eagle putt were exciting at the moment because it jumped you into the lead. But seeing all four of Pebble Beach’s par-5s play like medium-hard par-4s was not that interesting.
On the other hand, when a squall rolled in during Saturday’s third round with light rain and winds whipping beyond 30 mph, that was interesting as hell. Give me more of that, please.
> McIlroy won $3.6 million for his Pebble Beach victory. That’s pretty big money for a niche sport that doesn’t draw great TV ratings and has always lived off its demographics — those watching are mostly wealthy men over 40 years old.
I’m not sure these inflated purses — done to keep up with LIV Golf — are sustainable, which is probably why the PGA Tour needed Strategic Sports Group (SSG) to invest $1.5 billion. Based on viewership compared to team sports (and I’m saying this without any data whatsoever), you might make a case that pro golfers are starting to be overpaid. Of course, nobody is ever going to say they’re overpaid.
P.S.: Scottie Scheffler, Taylor Pendrith and Billy Horschel tied for ninth at Pebble. They each won $535,000. That’s enough to buy 19 base-model Toyota Camrys, fyi.
> Golf writers are not overpaid. They are actually an endangered species…
> An update on SSG: It owns the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Liverpool Football Club, among other properties. The Red Sox haven’t had a winning record in their last three seasons; the floundering Penguins rank 24th out of 32 teams in the current National Hockey League standings; and Liverpool is in first place in the soccer’s Premier League. One out of three isn’t bad but it also isn’t good.
> The WM Phoenix Open held its final Monday qualifying this week. The PGA Tour is eliminating most of the qualifiers next year and will probably get rid of all of them by the following season.
The Monday qualifiers were always an under-utilized asset. But the passing of these events will mostly go unheralded. Nobody cares about the guys trying to claw their way onto the PGA Tour. The standard line is, “Just play better.” Without Mondays, though, the question is: Play better where? The Q-School only gets players onto the Korn Ferry Tour.
As for college players going directly to the PGA Tour, that will be a rarity. The Tour created PGA Tour University, a system in which collegians can earn points for high finishes and assorted other achievements. Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent earned a card, but has deferred it while Florida State’s Luke Clanton is close to earning his card but intends to stay in school and try to help his team win the NCAA title. So it’s not a pipeline and, like all things in college golf, the system is weighted toward the power conference schools.
> Cutting the exempt list from 125 to 100 and shrinking field sizes is turning the PGA Tour into an almost-closed shop instead of the meritocracy it used to be. I don’t like it.
THEY SAID IT
Lucas Glover on Rory McIlroy’s win: “When he’s good, he’s great. And when he’s not great, he’s good.”
