NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Justin Thomas, Keegan Bradley and Cameron Young were put on the clock early in their second round at the PGA Championship, and they didn’t understand why they were singled out.
They were far from the only ones whose round was dragging. As Thomas argued, they weren’t holding up the group behind them — they were the ones being held up. The broadcast captured Thomas and Bradley pointing to the group ahead of them on the fourth hole at Aronimink Golf Club.
“The hard part to me with the whole pace of play thing is that you, there’s so much that goes into golf and there’s so much that goes into hole to hole,” Thomas said. “… Are you hitting it close? Are you able to tap it in, or you have to mark it? Stuff like that — are you holding the group up or are you not — to where it’s very hard to make that call. And we just didn’t agree with it, to be honest.”
Thomas and his group hustled on the ensuing hole, and officials took them off the clock. Multiple slow shots while a player is “on the clock” can result in a one-stroke penalty, but Thomas said he didn’t feel rushed.
“I backed off on my first shot being on the clock, even,” Thomas said. “It’s just, it’s so hard out here, and that’s the last thing I’m going to do is make a mistake because I feel like I’m rushing.
“If we were, for some reason, to get in a position where I was getting, we were getting bad times and we were continuing to be on, I would have had more discussions with the rules officials to kind of plead my case.”
For the second straight day at this major championship, rounds frequently exceeded five hours and sometimes hit 5 1/2. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and Englishmen Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick went out as a threesome at about 8:40 a.m. local time. They were wrapping up just after 2:10 p.m.
Scheffler and some of his peers pointed to the difficulty of the PGA of America’s pin locations as one factor slowing down play.
“You just got to continue to try to hit good shots, and most of the pins today were, I mean, kind of absurd,” Scheffler said after a 1-over 71 put him at 2 under for the championship.
“They were just so far into the areas where we thought the pins were going to be, and then they just — like the one on 14 was probably the hardest pin that I’ve seen in a long time just because, I mean, there’s literally just like a spine (in the green) and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll just put the pin right on top of it.’ And you’re like, ‘All right, well, I’ll see what I can do.'”
Chris Gotterup had similar feelings even after carding a 5-under 65.
“I don’t think it’s unfair, but I do think for pace of play and certain aspects, there have been a couple — you know, 14 today is probably aggressive, I will say,” Gotterup said. “You’re hitting a 4-iron to a 10-foot circle, and if it doesn’t go there, it’s off the green, and if you hit it 40 feet left, you have a very hard 2-putt.”
There’s also a logistical element. With 156 total players starting off the first and 10th tees — which share a tee box — some threesomes run into each other. Players leaving the eighth hole must cross through No. 11’s tee complex to get to the ninth tee.
Rory McIlroy, after carding a bogey-free 67 to move five shots off the pace, nodded to those exact realities.
“There is a few bottlenecks on this course anyway, with the eighth green, the 10th green beside each other, you’ve got like 16 green and 9 tee and 17 tee right there. So there’s a few little parts of the course that you can sort of get jammed on,” the Northern Irishman said. “But it’s fine.”
The pace of play frequently crops up as a concern at majors with large fields, and it’s likely to be eased Saturday and Sunday with 83 players making the cut and advancing to the weekend.
“It seems like the first two days of major championship golf are always going to be like that,” McIlroy said. “You get that afternoon tee time on Friday at Augusta, and it’s one of the slowest rounds of the year. You don’t mind being out there because it’s Augusta, but at the same time it is very, very slow. But it will, obviously over the weekend, it will speed up.”
–Adam Zielonka, Field Level Media
