Another week, another slow-play debate in professional golf. Then again, is it really a debate when everyone is in agreeement it’s a major issue that seems to never get fixed?
Popular LPGA pro Charley Hull had the best idea for fixing slow play yet – taking away players’ tour cards. The “ruthless” penalty, as she described it, would never come to fruition. The PGA Tour is attempting to fix it in its own way by shrinking field sizes, a proposal that was recently approved but won’t go into effect until 2026. The DP World Tour, to its credit, actually did penalize a player somewhat recently at the BMW Australian PGA Championship, though the player was a rookie, Jacob Skov Olesen, who took 130 seconds to play his second shot on the 10th hole in the first round.
This week on the Ladies European Tour, it was Carlota Ciganda, a notorious slow-play offender, who drew the ire of a number of folks on social media for taking well over 40 seconds (the allocated time per shot, by “rule”) to play a shot on the 15th hole of the final round. One Twitter/X user, @Golfingbrock, began timing Ciganda’s pre-shot routine once her playing partner’s ball had found the 15th green:
Players are supposed to have 40 seconds to hit a shot.
Ciganda routinely doubles that time and the tours won’t do anything about it.
So why post about it? Because whether it’s on tour or at your local muni, slow play is a plague that must be eradicated. pic.twitter.com/ChoVApJBxN
— Brock 🪨 (@Golfingbrock) December 1, 2024
To be honest, the bar for pace of play has been set so slow that this doesn’t even seem that bad. But as a repeat offender, Ciganda got folks on the internet plenty riled up with her nearly 90-second routine. The 34-year-old Spaniard was actually penalized two shots for slow play in the second round of the 2023 Amundi Evian Championship, a penalty she refused to accept, ultimately leading to her disqualification from the event.
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There was no such penalty on Sunday at the Spanish Open, which Ciganda went on to win for the second time, much to Golf Twitter’s chagrin:
Players are supposed to have 40 seconds to hit a shot.
Ciganda routinely doubles that time and the tours won’t do anything about it.
So why post about it? Because whether it’s on tour or at your local muni, slow play is a plague that must be eradicated. pic.twitter.com/ChoVApJBxN
— Brock 🪨 (@Golfingbrock) December 1, 2024
This is cheating. Plain and simple.
— Tron Carter (@TronCarterNLU) December 1, 2024
Amen. The only way to change it is to start hammering people with strokes, and it needs to start at the AM level yesterday.
— Steve M. (@GolfBurner) December 1, 2024
Good grief that's insane how long she took. People need to be given 2 stroke penalties everytime they take over 45 seconds if your the 1st player and 25 seconds for everyone else. I guarantee that will resolve issues immediately. Simply have a shot clock in each group.
— Greg Mitchell (@gregnmitchell) December 1, 2024
As Ryan French, AKA Monday Q Info, pointed out, Ciganda’s group was put on the clock in the third round and she also received a few bad times. That was it:
And in the third round, her group was on the clock, (as her group almost always is), she got bad times after that but nothing is done about it. No fine, no penalty shot. pic.twitter.com/xLivlPnOhU
— Monday Q Info (@acaseofthegolf1) December 1, 2024
Something tells us we’ll be discussing this issue again, and again, and again in 2025.
Main Image: Stuart Franklin
