“Monetary fines are useless,” Collin Morikawa suggests stricter penalties to PGA Tour for slow pace-of-play golfers

Collin Morikawa urged the PGA Tour to implement some penalty strokes on players instead of monetary fines for the slow pace of play.

“Monetary fines are useless,” Collin Morikawa suggests stricter penalties to PGA Tour for slow pace-of-play golfers

Collin Morikawa (Image via X)

The slow pace-of-play has once again become a major issue for the PGA Tour to tackle. In recent weeks, there have been several debates regarding this. 2-time major champion Collin Morikawa has urged the PGA Tour to take some stricter action against these slow players while claiming that “monetary fines” are useless.

The slow play issue came into the spotlight at the Farmers Insurance Open. The final group trio of Harry English, Andrew Novak, and Aldrich Potgieter would take over 5 hours and 29 minutes to complete a round.

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The PGA Tour currently places monetary fines on players who slow down the game with the passage of their play. Despite this repeated fines, the pace-of-play has remained slow.

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Recently, during the Mexico Open, the issue of slow play flared up after golfer Aaron Rai took over 2 minutes to hit a putt. During the final round, he found himself in contention for the title. At the 8th hole, his ball would land around 15 feet away from the hole.

Rai would then use the AimPoint method. After two minutes of measuring the incline, the English golfer went on to miss the putt and made a bogey on that hole. His slow play in this led to golf fans attacking him on social media.

Speaking at The Players Championship, Collin Morikawa claimed that the Tour needs to start implementing penalties strokes in events or the FedEx Cup rankings.

I think you just have to start stroking guys and giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedEx Cup… What I’ve learned is that monetary fines are useless.

Collin Morikawa said

The AimPoint method is one of the techniques that has led to some slow play in PGA Tour events. This method is used by golfers to read the greens and try to understand the break of the putts. It requires players to use both of their feet to feel the slope use their fingers and eyes to determine what line to start the putt on.

6-time PGA Tour champion Lucas Glover recently urged for the ban of this move. While speaking on the SiriusXM PGA Tour radio, the golfer claimed that this method had not helped anyone to make more putts since it’s inception on the tour. Morikawa, who is one of those who uses this method, would come into the aide of this and threw a shade at Glover for using long putters.

Justin Thomas backs PGA Tour’s plan to tackle pace-of-play problem

The PGA Tour has started planning on ways to tackle the pace-of-play option. 2-time major champion Justin Thomas has backed the plans of the tour while admitting that he is one of the slow players on the tour.

Justin Thomas
Justin Thomas (Image via Imago)

Earlier in the day, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan spoke on this matter. The commissioner informed the reporters that the tour is planning to “publishing speed-of-play related statistics later this season“. This would see the tour publicly name the players who are found to be playing with a slow pace.

While speaking in the press conference of The Players Championship, Thomas backed this decision from the tour.

If we put it in the locker room or put it out, which would obviously end up getting out, but nobody wants to be known as that. I mean, I’m the first to admit… I’m on the slow side of players. It bothers me.

Justin Thomas said

The Former World No.1 later expressed that he wants to know why he is slow and that he has talked with the officials regarding this. He also pointed out that smaller fields have speeded up the pace of play due to golfers being paired in twosomes rather than threesomes.

Thomas will now turn his attention to The Players Championship. In the 5 events he has played this season so far, he has made the cut in all of them and has had 3 top-10 finishes. One of them was a runner-up finish to Sepp Straka in The American Express.

For the first round of The Players Championship, Thomas has been paired up with Hideki Matsuyama and Ludvig Aberg, two golfers who have won once this year already. The trio will start the round at the 10th hole at 8:24 a.m. Eastern Time.