Report: PGA Tour to focus on slowest players to improve pace of play

The PGA Tour will move away from its group-based system and focus on individual players in a revised pace-of-play policy, according to Golf Digest's Dave Shedloski. The new policy will be implemented after the 2020 Masters.

The shift in philosophy will result in a list of players who repeatedly average more than 45 seconds to hit a shot. Rules officials will be more likely to time these players and penalize them for a second bad time during a round.

"We're not trying to blacklist anyone," an anonymous player told Shedloski. "But it's going to be much more fair to the majority of the players."

Currently, groups as a whole are put on the clock, regardless of how quickly certain players within the group are playing.

"It's more for the betterment of everyone playing. You see your pairings and think, 'Oh, God, I'm with that guy,'" another player told Shedloski. "We all know who the slower players are. They're trying to move away from that group-based timing system because, say you are paired with the same guy four times through the year, and you get put on the clock four times, and your total is five times for the year. How is that fair?"

The PGA Tour has gathered data on more than 10 million shots hit. The data indicates that 90% of players hit their shots in under 40 seconds.

The topic of slow play was a focal point during the 2018-19 season, with Bryson DeChambeau the face of the issue. Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy repeatedly voiced their concerns about pace of play throughout the season.