Report: PGA Tour Players On A Random Clock And It's Not Ideal (Kisner Exempted)

Nice work by Andy Johnson at FriedEgg.com to time one grouping at the U.S. Open for nine holes.

While it’s still not as powerful as the visual of watching the difference in how these players work, anyone with any imagination can easily envsion the agony of watching some of the longer debate sessions that took place. As other professional sports fret about the length of their games, the PGA Tour has made clear slow play and the slowest players are just not a a big deal. Even the USGA, which has had amazing success with time par systems, backs off at the U.S. Open out of fear of upsetting the most important people on the planet.

Given that players have 40 seconds to play a shot, the regularity with which they break the rules is, frankly stupefying given how rarely penalties have been dished out. And we know how hard it is to watch in person.

Unless Kevin Kisner is playing or Justin Thomas is hitting a tee shot…

As DeChambeau, Kisner, and Thomas worked their way through Pebble Beach’s front nine, I recorded the amount of time it took each player to hit each shot from the moment that it became clear the previous shot had ended. I also noted the order in which they played their shots within the group. To determine the exact start time for each shot, I simply used common sense. On approach shots, I started the clock when both caddie and player had arrived at the ball and the group ahead had vacated the green. On successive shots within the group, I started it when the previous shot had clearly ended—that is, when the previous player had picked up his tee, or when the preceding putt or chip had been marked, etc.

The results are below. The numbers in the left column—1, 2, and 3—represent the order in which the player hit the shot within the group. 1* signifies shots for which a player was first in the order but had to wait on the group ahead or called for a ruling. Finally, I have color coded the times: green = a time under 40 seconds; yellow = a time between 40-60 seconds; and red = a time over 60 seconds.

Oh and the red flows…