How England Golf's yellow cards are tackling blight of slow play

Even the most thrilling victories can be dulled by the pace of modern professional golf. Last week, Rory McIlroy's win at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am was one of his most significant in recent years, showcasing his electrifying talent. This exciting competition was perfectly suited to Pebble Beach, one of golf's hallowed grounds.

The tournament should have been a captivating sporting spectacle, keeping viewers glued to their screens throughout. The course on the California coast is the kind where spectators would want to watch every hole. However, to watch the final round from start to finish required saintly patience. In the US, the coverage stretched from brunch to dinner time, taking up precious weekend hours.

The final group of three teed off at 10:15 am local time. In the UK, this meant watching from afternoon tea time until bedtime to witness McIlroy's potentially significant victory. His final round lasted almost five and a half hours after it began. And this was far from the worst case in recent weeks.

The final group of McIlroy, Shane Lowry, and Sepp Straka were often held up by the group in front of them, with Tom Kim particularly culpable. The young South Korean, touted as one of the sport’s future stars, took far too long over many of his shots, including his second at the sixth, where he found the sea. Interestingly, though, the answer to this blight on the sport may not lie entirely with the time taken over individual shots.

An initiative pioneered at last year's top amateur championship in England proved this point. In the most prestigious tournaments, three-ball rounds regularly take over four and a half hours. Some would argue that this is still too slow, but in reality, it is a reasonable timeframe on courses set up at over 7,000 yards designed to test the best players.

"Fortunately, the sport is looking at it, and I think we've got a good grip on it," James Crampton, England Golf's Championship Manager, told BBC Sport. A key change introduced last year was the setting up of a number of 'pace of play stations' at various points around the course. Each group must arrive at these points by a certain time to avoid the most severe of penalties on their scorecards.

"Instead of monitoring how long golfers take over individual shots, we're monitoring how long they take to complete a hole," Crampton explained. "We have three or four pace of play stations around the course, and three-balls need to reach these checkpoints in a prescribed time. If they don't, they receive what we call a yellow card warning."

"They then have to be on time at the next checkpoint. If they're not, then all three players in the group get a one-shot penalty." No golfers were penalised in this way last season, although several came close. During the English Amateur Championship, some players could be seen running down the fairways at Seaton Carew in order to make the checkpoint times.

In short, it appears to have worked. "They're not just looking at the time they take over their shots, they're looking at other things that take up a lot of time," Crampton added. "The attitude has changed. They're standing on the first tee knowing that they have to reach these pace of play stations."

"[Previously] some people were told by referees to speed up, but they were ignored because players knew there would never be a penalty." Under this scheme, any group that has not lost ground on the golfers in front of them will not be penalised. Similarly, lengthy rulings are also taken into account, but players are incentivised to keep up.

"We're very keen that players are aware of how long they take to put on and take off their gloves, how long they take to look at yardages, how long they take to walk to their ball," Crampton explained. "We don't really care how long they take over their shot. We just want to make sure that they're completing their hole."

"All the things that we need to do to play golf, they're doing in a reasonable time by reaching these pace of play stations." Slow play is an annoyance at all levels of the game. In the professional ranks, the DP World Tour has made progress, and refreshingly, LIV has implemented shot penalties.

But the PGA Tour seems to turn a blind eye to its members, indulging them until CBS commentator Dottie Pepper last month accused slow players of "a lack of respect". Now, the Tour has investment from an outside investor – the Strategic Sports Group – who will want their stake to grow. Therefore, the "product" has to improve, and speeding up play can only help.

They could start by adopting two-balls instead of three-balls in the final rounds. England Golf's major events always have a 50-minute break between the morning and afternoon tee waves, which helps with the flow of play throughout the day. This is more difficult to achieve in professional events, where two-tee starts are the norm, but Crampton believes his blueprint involving pace of play stations can be transferred to the paid game.

"We're not putting a lot of pressure on the players," he added. "If a group is out of position, we're not following them around the fairway in a buggy (which happens in professional events when groups are 'on the clock'). That can be quite off-putting. We're just letting them go. We're saying, guys, we're at this position now, we need you to get to that position, and we'll let them get on with their game."

"So I don't see any reason why [it can't be transferred to the professional game]. I think we might just need to get away from this concept that slow play is all down to the time taken over the shot." It is an interesting take on what is arguably the most pressing issue in the sport.

Undoubtedly, staying up to watch McIlroy's brilliant victory last Sunday was worthwhile, a victory that should have brought new followers to the sport - but the reality is that, for most people, even hardcore fans, the game took far too long.