PGA Tour lays out plan to help pace of play, broadcasts

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — With the topic of slow play at a boiling point, the PGA Tour said Wednesday it will begin testing and implementing changes aimed at speeding up play, moves it also hopes will help improve its broadcasts.

In a meeting with a small group of reporters ahead of this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, tour officials previewed several ideas they are already working on or are hoping to install based on feedback from an extensive fan survey, as well as conversations with players, sponsors and broadcast partners.

Among the proposed initiatives are:

• Testing the use of distance-measuring devices, which would allow players and caddies to use rangefinders during a tournament in order to acquire shot distances quicker. Officials didn’t disclose which events will feature the use of such devices, but PGA Tour senior vice president of rules and competitions Gary Young said they are hoping to get a sample of different kinds of events and field sizes.

• Publicizing pace-of-play data for players using “average stroke time,” which is the average amount of time it takes a player to take a stroke using Shotlink data.

• Disclosing fines and penalties for players who violate slow-play rules in order to satiate fan feedback for more transparency, as well as players who have called for more slow-play accountability.

• Using the PGA Tour’s new video review center to make calls on rulings quicker and more efficiently.

“As the commissioner (Jay Monahan) said back at the end of the year in his video to the fans, everything’s on the table,” PGA Tour chief marketing and communications officer Andy Weitz said. “So it’s in that spirit that we look at creating the best version of PGA Tour golf.”

While tour officials pointed out that the average time it takes a player to hit a shot has not significantly increased in recent years, the outcry for a faster pace never has been louder.

This past weekend, for example, analyst Dottie Pepper criticized the pace of play during CBS’ broadcast of the Farmers Insurance Invitational, where the final group took 3 hours to make the turn during the last round.

“I think we’re starting to need a new word to talk about this pace-of-play issue, and it’s ‘respect’ — for your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasts, for all of it,” Pepper said. “It’s just got to get better.”

Weitz said making the broadcasts better for the viewer is the goal.

“There is the actual amount of time it takes (to hit a shot) and there’s the perception of the amount of time it takes, especially when it comes to broadcast,” he said. “And so I think it’s about, for the average fan, most of whom are watching on broadcast, it’s about how we take the feedback to help us prioritize how we use the time in broadcast to show them more golf.”

In a change that was announced in November, the PGA Tour will reduce field sizes next year, which should, officials said Wednesday, space out tee times. That would help with pace and make it easier to identify slow groups or specific players.

As Young pointed out, the tour’s large field sizes in the past has allowed for slow players to go somewhat unnoticed.

“I feel confident that we now as a rules committee are going to have room to operate out there and effectively enforce the policy and have an impact due to the spacing that we’re going to be able to create, the flow,” Young said. “Now it’s on us. We’ve got to make sure that these groups do not fall out of position … smaller fields, we can make those tee-time intervals larger and the slow players can’t hide anymore.”

The tour does not want to stop there, especially given the many factors — weather, conditioning, green speeds and course setup — that can contribute to slowing down a round. It’s why they say they are trying to attack the situation from different angles.

According to Weitz, although the tour does not have a public version of a shot clock like the new TGL does, it does have an internal shot clock (the aforementioned “average stroke time” unit) that has facilitated meetings with players and brought about awareness of slow play and an increased effort to speed up play.

“This is about changing player behavior,” Weitz said. “We really want to send a message to fans that we’re evolving.”

Though PGA Tour chief competitions officer Tyler Dennis argued that the Strategic Sports Group’s $2 billion investment in the tour hasn’t precipitated these changes but rather facilitated them, he and the rest of the executive group on hand Wednesday acknowledged the reality that professional golf is at an inflection point.

“Alongside the actual hard capital, [SSG] brought a fresh perspective and they’ve helped us open our eyes to what we can learn from other sports and how they’ve navigated similar challenges,” Dennis said. “We see these things as potentially no-regrets tests that we should embrace so we can protect the history of the legacy, the heritage of the game while also modernizing it to meet the expectations our fans have.”

Source: espn.com