Slow play has long been a hot topic of conversation both on tour and at club level, with many column inches devoted to the causes and possible solutions.
On tour, penalties (and fines) can be imposed for breaches of tour slow play directives and policies, but for many observers, they are imposed too infrequently to make much difference. Richard Bland was penalised and fined during LIV Golf’s Chicago event in September 2024 for a breach of that tour’s pace-of-play policy, which states that “a player has 40 seconds to play each stroke, with an additional ten seconds if they are the first to play any stroke in the group”. In addition to a one-stroke penalty for a bad time, Bland was also fined $10,000 by LIV Golf.
