Slow racing is becoming a recurring problem, with the world’s best golfers repeatedly complaining about the pace of the first two rounds of the Open being hit as “devilish”.
While there were some great golf balls in the first round at Royal Protush on Thursday, it saw the usual complaints, slower and bigger than the tricky link itself.
Justin Thomas and Tommy Fleetwood joined hometown hero Rory McIlroy as the starter after 3pm played the first tee after 9pm and before 9pm they started to set off at the end of the opening.
His functional group is just one of many groups that many are hampered by traffic and slow moving groups, as painful game pace inevitably has adverse side effects on the group’s focus, flow and power.
These numbers are painful – 156 golfers, no field separation between the 1st and 10th tees, and in the six-hour round, there were five groups lined up on the seventh tees.
Understandably, the golfer was frustrated for the first time.
“It feels like we’ve been on the golf course for 12 hours,” Liv Golf Tour’s faster Marc Leishman claimed. We’ve been on eight holes for three hours. It’s hard to solve, especially from where we play four and a half hours a week. ”
Scottish contender Robert McIntyre defended his master for another factor: “We can’t walk faster. I think the golf course is too long.”
Royal Prowush’s thick, swelling roughness combined with a series of wrong t-shirts has caused the field to spend quite a while tumbling into the conditions in the trademark environment to desperately hunt their balls – a harder hunt than most American courses.
Aaron Rai, a British man, understood both sides of the problem, explains: “It’s a little slow. But, naturally, the pace of the game will be a little slower than usual due to the challenging courses.”
Five-time Major Champion Brooks Koepka believes that R&A should take a step further and should “start touching” with a stronger punishment if it takes too long.
Michael McEwan, the host of the golf podcast, posted a tweet on X in response to the rhythm of the game: “Today’s rhythm of the game is harmful. I know this is a major, there are a lot of dangers and so on. But, let’s not let ourselves joke about it.
Why is the game still so slow – Is there any real answer?
It’s a common story where players face the same problem in many of the major recent games, especially the 2025 Open and the U.S. Open, without doing anything to limit losses.
In many American golf games, the field is split in half, with the group taking out the championship at the 1st and 10th holes.
However, the Open did not adopt this split, so all 156 players had to wait for their turn to play at Royal Shotrus.
While it is totally legal to find a ball in the rough and inevitably slows down the game, one big problem facing the sport is that golfers spend too long preparing and executing their strokes.
Shooting clock or time limit has been proposed, but has not been implemented.
Tried new ideas like using a rangefinder to speed up shooting preparations, but there are still meaningful solutions. Whether we see a solution in 2026 remains to be seen.
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