That question, which feels ubiquitous if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of the Great Golf Discourse in 2023, might seem ludicrous because the answer seems obvious: Of course, it does! In fact, the frustrating part is it’s fundamentally unanswerable. Let’s say, for instance, that the PGA Tour is right in claiming that the average round time is almost totally unchanged. Let’s say, for instance, that someone like Patrick Cantlay is correct in claiming that the average round time is almost totally unchanged. Does that mean there’s no problem, or that there’s always been a problem? Or let’s say you watch the latest video of Patrick Cantlay waggling endlessly over a ball in a way that’s agonising and annoying, but that, if you look at the broader context of his group’s position on a course, actually doesn’t have a serious effect on pace of play — is anecdotal evidence of individual dithering a pace-of-play problem on its own?

Gary Young, the PGA Tour’s Senior Vice President of Rules and Competitions, is wise enough not to bother answering that question, at least without a few clarifications. Modest and affable, the 57-year-old former club pro is the de facto public face of the Tour when it comes to pace of play, and what bothers him most is the perception that he and his team aren’t doing anything.

“Once in a while someone writes an article saying, yeah, the PGA Tour does nothing about pace of play,” he said. “You hear that type of talk, and we’re the ones who have to live with it, because we’re the ones who do this every day. And it’s just laughable to us … imagine going to work every day and having someone says: ‘You don’t do your job very well.’”

After seeing a critical tweet by a Golf Digest staffer, Young invited us to ride with him at the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow to see how the whole thing worked. It felt like a fair proposal — criticise away, but first see how the sausage is made. I happened to be the writer on site, and on a chilly Thursday morning at 6.30am, we hopped on his green cart and headed for the 10th hole where the first threesomes were teeing off.

Young’s team was nine strong in Charlotte, and while he serves as the chief referee at 12 events per year, the Wells Fargo wasn’t one of them, which meant he was free to field questions. Bursts of chatter crackled from his radio: Officials calling for rulings, narrating the drama of Austin Cook rushing to the first tee when JB Holmes withdrew three minutes before his tee time, razzing one another to pass the quiet moments. They’d be there until the very end of play, a shift exceeding 12 hours.

Over the course of the morning, I was able to curb some of my previous ignorance, and what follows are the 10 most important concepts.

1. ‘Time Par’ is the guiding light for pace of play

In order to enforce pace of play, there has to be a standard, and because every course and every field is different, that standard needs to be adjustable. Hence, “time par”, a hole-by-hole breakdown of how long each twosome or threesome should spend on the course. As you can see in the image below, the rough guidelines for threesomes, are 12-14 minutes for a par 3, 14-16 minutes for a par 4, and 17-19 minutes for a par 5. Some holes get special dispensations, like the 17th at Quail Hollow, a particularly nasty par 3. There, time par is 14 minutes. Overall, time par for the entire round is four hours and 45 minutes for threesomes, and four hours even for weekend pairs. With tee times separated by 11 minutes, time par allows for a steady rhythm of play, at least in theory, and Young can track it to the second on an app that updates instantly when the pin goes back in the hole.

2. Enforcement requires constant vigilance

The first groups off 1 and 10 on Thursday and Friday are of particular importance, since they set the pace for everyone behind them. If they stay on track relative to time par, everyone behind them simply has to keep up. (To be out of position, a group would need to arrive at an open hole on a par 3, fail to hit a tee shot before the hole is cleared on a par 4, or fail to hit all three tee shots before the hole is cleared on a par 5.) On the back nine, Young watched Ben Martin, Robby Shelton and Taylor Montgomery play at a brisk pace for the first four holes, staying three minutes ahead of time par. A difficult stretch at No. 14 set them back, though, and by the time they completed their fifth hole, they had lost seven minutes and were almost four minutes over time. The radio cackled with greater frequency, and after their tee shots on the 16th, John Mutch waited to give each player a warning.

This bearing of bad news is part of the job. And it’s why Young won’t get too close to any of the players — he knows that eventually he’ll have to tell them something they don’t want to hear.

3. There is a strict system of escalating warnings and penalties

Once a group is warned, they typically have two holes to get back on pace. In this case, Martin, Shelton and Montgomery ate back the minutes and finished the back nine just one minute over time par — an acceptable number to everyone involved. If they hadn’t picked up the pace, the next step would be to put them on the clock, at which point every shot would be timed by an observer. The average time for an individual shot is around 38 seconds, and anything under 50 seconds for a first shot and under 40 seconds for subsequent shots is considered acceptable. There are a few caveats here — time spent walking to the ball doesn’t count, and the clock will stop if a player has an issue with the gallery, or has to wait for another player to clear the area, or if he’s in a tough spot on the course. Aside from those circumstances, a player who gets a “bad time”, in Young’s words, gets one free warning for the year. Any further excessive time violations, and the fines kick in.

“Let’s say the fine is $50,000,” Young said to me at one point, and I couldn’t resist interrupting.

“Are we saying the fine is $50,000, or is it $50,000?”

“Let’s say it’s $50,000,” he repeated, grinning.

Gary Young speaks to the media at the Players Championship. Sam Greenwood

The PGA Tour provided the official pace-of-play policy, which does indeed state that a second “bad time,” defined as over the limit when a group is on the clock, comes with a $50,000 fine, with each successive violation incurring another $20,000 fine.

Another way to incur a fine is to play in a group that gets timed (remember, official timing comes after a warning) 12 times in a season. There is also the potential of a stroke penalty, and eventually a disqualification, but as Young said: “You’d have to be brain dead to get that.”

A player’s group would have to be warned, then he’d have to be put on the clock, then he’d have to get two bad times in the same tournament before any stroke penalty would apply. The last time Young remembers such a penalty occurring came at the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah, and they’re loathe to assess such penalties because they’re not equitable between players. Someone in the top 10 could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars for a one-stroke penalty, while another who was below the cut line wouldn’t lose anything.

(Of note: according to Young, all money from fines is given to charity. The PGA Tour declined to release any annual fine totals.)

4. Meticulous data is kept on each player, and they know it

Every shot by every player is entered into a database by tournament volunteers who simply push a button to generate a timestamp, and taken together over a rolling 10-tournament period — with the slowest 10 per cent of times thrown out to guard against volunteer error, and further exclusions for penalties, drops, provisionals, and even the first group shot in a similar position — they paint an in-depth picture of each player’s pace. The players themselves can see their updated ranking each week on their members app.

With thousands of shots at their disposal, Young and his team feel confident that the sample size is plenty sufficient to draw conclusions. He receives a list each week, and any player who averages more than 45 seconds per shot goes on the Observation List. Those players are able to see their own ranking on their member app, so that they know where they stand among their peers. With that data, Young can not only monitor those players whose averages have exceeded 45 seconds, but he can also sit down with the worst offenders. His pitch at these meetings is usually the same: “I’m not saying you have to become a fast player, but we need to get you closer to being an average player.”

Recently, Young sat down with a player who was confused about why they were meeting.

“I’m not part of the problem,” he said. “I’m ranked seventh.”

“That means you’re ranked seventh slowest,” Young explained, and the player’s face fell.

The data can be further broken down into five component parts based on the type of shot, and that gives players a more complete picture of where they’re taking the most time. A given player could, for instance, be plenty fast from tee to green, but spend too long over his putts.

All of these numbers are a massive help to Young, if only for his own justification. In the past, slow players would often accuse the tour of profiling them; hard numbers remove that argument, and place Young on solid ground.

5. The quickest fixes are not always the best fixes

There are two foolproof ways to make PGA Tour rounds faster. The first is to make courses easier, but as Young pointed out, that would make tournaments less interesting and be less effective at identifying the best players. (They do occasionally make the set-up easier on Thursday and Friday, when slow play is more impactful before the cut and it can speed things along.) The second way is to reduce fields, and while the PGA Tour is taking steps in that direction next year, theirs is also a member organisation, and any gain in pace of play has to be weighed against fewer opportunities for its players.

6. A 156-man field is probably ‘too many’ players for fast play

As we watched our trio play the back nine in just one minute over time par, and the group that started on No. 1 — Ryan Armour, Kevin Streelman, and Hayden Buckley — play in three minutes under par, Young explained the accordion effect, and why the pace wouldn’t last — the moment they made the turn, the course would be saturated with 26 groups, and now any delay would affect the entire field as the accordion compressed. At that point, delay is inevitable, and according to Young, a field size of 144 is the number beyond which things get tricky, particularly in the winter. To prove his point, our group of Martin/Shelton/Montgomery made the turn at one minute over time par, but finished the round 13 minutes over. They lost 12 minutes to waiting on the back nine, for a group time of four hours, 58 minutes.

“When it gets to this time of year, when the sun comes up earlier and goes down later, we can achieve 156,” he said. “But when you ask us to do a 156 when really only 144 players could possibly finish, that’s where it becomes a problem, and I think that has led to some of the unnecessary criticism of the tour. And people say that we have a pace-of-play problem. No, we don’t. We don’t. We’re just maximising the opportunities for our membership right now.”

At that point, the goal for each group is simply to be “in position”, and that’s why, as frustrating as someone like Cantlay can be at his most deliberate, there’s not a direct correlation between that type of waffling and slow pace. If his group is bound to wait on the next tee anyway, it actually doesn’t matter what Cantlay does in that moment, annoying as it might be to watch.

Patrick Cantlay. Ben Jared

7. Yes, there are problematic slow players

By the same token, the Cantlays of the world absolutely can be human delays under the wrong circumstances. Young routinely mentioned the traffic jam metaphor — if everyone went the same speed, it would flow beautifully, but the world doesn’t actually work that way, which means that slowness is a “fender bender” just the same as a penalty, and it all impacts total time. While Young doesn’t think that slow play is a worse problem now than ever before, he did concede that the increased reliance on analytics, along with more thorough caddie involvement, had made young players slower than their elders. Part of this, he said, is down to the dearth of pace standards in college golf, and how young pros have to be broken of their school habits on the Korn Ferry and PGA Tours.

8. Television and popularity can impact the best players

Tee times are typically grouped on Thursdays and Fridays with Class 1 players — the elite of the elite — in the middle of the tee sheet. With cameras following on every hole, plus bigger galleries, these players deal with a lot more “settling” before shots than their lesser-known colleagues, which can add time.

“Then again,” said Young, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rory McIlroy being timed.”

9. The rules officials have a certain amount of discretion

Young and his team have to take a holistic approach to group warnings. At one point on Thursday morning, a group had faded to four minutes behind time par, but because they were close to making the turn, and because the groups ahead of them were “bumping” into later groups on the back nine, there was no need to put them on the clock—a little gap would be a good thing, at least for the time being. A few years ago, they also earned the right to put individuals, rather than the entire group, on the clock, especially if they witnessed the other members of the group hustling after a warning. And while no player appreciates being singled out, the faster members of the group absolutely appreciate when an official recognises their attempts to set things right, and frees them from punishment for the actions of a playing partner.

10. Peer pressure is a potential answer

When I asked Young whether they might ever make the pace-of-play rankings public (as of now, it isn’t even sent to his entire team), he told me that the answer wasn’t a definitive no. It would have to come from the players, he said, deciding that a kind of public shaming would be to the overall benefit of the tour. It doesn’t seem especially likely, but, as Young said, “some guys say there’s nothing like a little peer pressure”.

When I asked Young if he kept the slowest players out of the first, pace-setter groups, he said no — on principle, they didn’t want to hide them, but it was also true that nothing worked to speed up a slow player quite like the pressure of being a pace-setter for the whole tournament.

I left convinced that if there is a pace-of-play problem, it’s not something that can be fixed without a few radical sacrifices. In other words, the next time I see a tweet noting that the tour has failed to reach the cut on Friday in the winter months, with a full field, I’ll understand that there’s not any real blame to throw around. Young and his team exist within the context of how the tour is run, from course conditions to field size to simple hours of daylight, and within that context the operation seemed sufficiently well oiled. Smaller fields, harsher fines, and a public reckoning might make some difference, but it’s hard to imagine what more they could do as things currently stand.

Certain criticisms now seem more facile to me — those who argue that they play four-hour rounds at their club ignore the millions of dollars at stake (not to mention the tougher conditions) on tour, while the punishment fetishists who think they can legislate their way to faster rounds are mostly unaware of practical realities on the course. Barring drastic changes from above — some of which we’ll get next year with reduced field events — Young’s combination of soft pressure, vigilance and professional rectitude seem like the best fit.

In real life, mitigation will beat the magic wand every time.

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Fortunately for Cantlay, the discourse died down a bit this past weekend, mainly because the Zurich Classic didn’t have nearly the amount of eyeballs on it as both the Masters and the RBC Heritage did. It helped, too, that the slow-play attention shifted to the LPGA Tour, where rookie Lucy Li incurred a slow-play fine during the third round of the Chevron Championship.

But soon enough (our guess: the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow), Cantlay will reclaim his spot as public enemy No. 1 no matter how many excuses he, his buddies on tour or the tour itself makes for him. As fellow pro Michael Kim put it on Sunday evening, though, Cantlay is far from the only slow one out there and arguably not even close to being the slowest:

Y’all think Cantlay is slow… you should see some others… ??‍ I think there should be a monthly report of the slowest players on @PGATOUR. Public shaming won’t work on Cantlay but might work on others.

— Michael S. Kim (@Mike_kim714) April 24, 2023

While they’re all fine points, the point about public shaming not working on Cantlay is as bang-on as it gets. Could it work on others? Unless it’s actually put into action, it’s hard to say.

In 2019, DP World Tour player Edoardo Molinari, brother of Francesco, tweeted out a slow-play report, one that featured names like Tiger Woods, Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau (it featured Francesco’s name, too). This was in response to a five-and-half-hour round that Molinari had played on the DP World Tour on a course “without rough”. There were nearly 150 names on the list Molinari sent out, but only three of them were fined, each $3,000.

Therein lies the problem. You can tweet out lists and public shame and fine financially well-off pros small sums of money all you want, but unless there’s a penalty that truly hurts a player’s score or his wallet, nothing will really change. All you have to do is listen to the way some players talk about the slow-play outrage to know that there is minimal interest in fixing the issue.

“All the things that have happened as of late have all been within the guidelines of the tour and what’s supposed to happen,” Xander Schauffele said this past Wednesday. “No one’s been penalised for slow play or anything of that nature. So we’re all operating within the framework of what the tour gives us. If enough people complain or if enough tour pros complain, that’s something the tour needs to address to either make it faster or change the time par. Without any context, it gets tricky because when you set up golf courses with Stimp 13 or 14 greens, tees in interesting positions, and pins in tough spots, it’s just going to take longer.

“We’re not playing like the local muni that sort of the average Joe compares our time par to,” he added. “We’re playing for a couple million — you know, $3.6 million. If you’re going to spend an extra minute to make sure you put yourself in the right spot, we’re going to do it.”

Cantlay more or less agreed, referring to the pace-of-play numbers not changing much over the last decade-plus.

“Trying to speed it up, I’d be curious to know how they’d want to do that,” Cantlay said. “I played the last two tournaments, and my group hasn’t been warned at all. So we’ve been in position the entire time. I don’t know how you would want even the groups that I’ve been in to play faster when our groups are in position and can’t go faster because the group in front of us is right in front of us.”

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By Keely Levins
It’s rare to see a slow-play penalty on either the LPGA Tour or the PGA Tour, especially during a major. But after the 15th hole, Klara Spilkova was assessed a two-stroke penalty for not adhering to the pace of play policy at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

The 25-year-old from Czechoslovakia, who played in the Olympics in 2016, finished the first two rounds at seven over with the penalty. Unfortunately for her, with three players ahead of her on the leader board yet to finish their rounds, the cut line is at six over. The two-stroke penalty has likely cost her a place in the major championship weekend.

The penalty comes two months after Stacy Lewis was critical of the pace of play at the Ladies Scottish Open, where she, Azahara Munoz and Jennifer Song took five hours, 16 minutes to finish their last round. At the time Lewis said, “I do think an effort needs to be made across the board to play faster, because obviously I wasn’t watching it on TV, but I’m sure it couldn’t have been fun to watch on TV.”

Though the costly penalty is certainly a tough one for Spilkova, issuing a penalty at a major suggests that pace of play is being taken seriously, possibly meaning faster rounds, as Lewis and others want.

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A different old clip is making the rounds on Golf Twitter on Friday involving Nick Faldo. Let’s just say he took a little more time than Trevino.

Watch as Faldo takes nearly two minutes to play a shot from the middle of the first fairway during the final round of what appears to be the 1990 Australian Masters.

You wouldn’t be happy stuck behind this guy all day!! You would’ve leading the Masters though ???‍@NickFaldo006 @mikeclaytongolf @GeoffShac pic.twitter.com/zuOnwyXLvH

— Rob Williamson (@Yeti2319) August 20, 2020

Wow. You’ll notice Faldo, who wound up finishing runner-up to Greg Norman that day, check the wind, change clubs, converse with his caddie, etc. In fact, he took so long that producers switched away to show shots from two other competitors while Faldo contemplated.

Even Bryson DeChambeau would think this is a bit much. Well, maybe not Bryson. But most players.

Sir Nick himself seemed to be appalled by the situation as well. After being tagged in the original tweet, the six-time major champ had this funny response:

FFS hit it man its only the 1st! ? https://t.co/gDcLcd76jz

— Sir Nick Faldo (@NickFaldo006) August 21, 2020

Seriously, how long did that round take?! And then he poked fun at himself even more by listing several silly excuses:

In my defence @Fannycaddie was brand-new on the bag and we were only conversing in Swedish ?? and all distances she gave were in metric and had to be converted into Imperial yards, and in the Southern hemisphere the grass blows the other way and it was a bad camera angle! ? https://t.co/gDcLcd76jz

— Sir Nick Faldo (@NickFaldo006) August 21, 2020

So the next time Faldo criticises a current player for taking too long, keep this clip in mind. But in the meantime, try to block this clip out of your mind. It’s rough.

PODCAST: Nick Faldo on winning six majors & his epic sweater collection

The post Even Nick Faldo is appalled by how long it took him to hit a shot in this old clip appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
It is early to be sure, but initial signs would indicate that the European Tour’s new and more stringent pace-of-play policy is having its desired effect. In a meeting with members of the media at last week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, senior referee Andy Macfee outlined the data amassed over the first two days of the tournament. On both, the 132-strong field got themselves around the 7,642-yard layout quicker than they had, in similar weather, one year earlier. (Comparisons drawn from the weekend play were impossible; 12 months ago the competitors played in two-balls, this year three-balls were needed).

“In the first round, play was ten minutes quicker,” revealed Macfee. “In the second round it was six minutes quicker. On average, the first round took four hours, 34 minutes (three minutes over the recommended time) and one day later it was the same. Perhaps even more importantly, the flow of play was brilliant. The players were definitely more aware of how long they were taking to hit. The absence of waiting for the group in front to move on drew favourable comments from just about every competitor. And we want them to get used to that going forward.”

Still, best not to get too carried away. As Macfee was quick to emphasize, the reduced size of the field last week (lack of daylight meant a field of 132 rather than a full-size 156) did bring certain advantages. For one thing, when the first groups out on either side of a two-tee start reached their tenth tees, they were not forced to wait. That is all but impossible when the field is bigger. Knowing there will be an inevitable delay at the turn, does, according to the veteran official, apply something of a subconscious brake to proceedings.

“The only way to really improve flow over the first two days is for us to put space into the course,” said Macfee. “And the only way to do that is by reducing the field. Which is tough for us to do as a members organization (translation: turkeys do not vote for Thanksgiving). After the cut we do have another option. This week we used an 11-minute interval between groups rather than 10. We will be doing that whenever we can.”

Surprisingly perhaps, but certainly impressively in the first week of this new and unfamiliar initiative, only three bad times were given out over the four days in Abu Dhabi. Previously, those misdemeanours would have been scrubbed at the end of each round. But now they are carried forward. A bad time on Thursday and another on Sunday, for example, means a one-shot penalty. And regular offenders will also face the prospect of heavier fines.

All of which seems to be having an effect. Although a handful of the usual suspects – no names but they know who they are – did come close to taking too long, they stayed just within the limits. In fact, only one breach was perpetrated by a player familiar with the European Tour. On day one rookie Viktor Hovland took 59 seconds (the prescribed limit is 40 seconds) to hit a putt on the 13th green. During the same round, local amateur Ahmed Skaik loitered over a shot on the second hole for 109 seconds (59 seconds over). And on the final day South African Erik Van Rooyen spent six seconds too long weighing up his approach shot.

“Viktor’s problem was that he took too long to get the line on his ball pointing exactly at the hole,” said Macfee. “But it was explained to him where he went wrong. He clearly listened. One day later we went back to check and he was much improved.”

Indeed, it was difficult to find even one dissenting voice amongst the players. Former Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn – also a long-time chairman of the player’s tournament committee – was just one who had nothing but good things to say about the new initiative.

“Pace of play has been great this week,” said the Dane. “There’s not been much moaning, either. It seems like the players have said to themselves, ‘well, this is it.’ It was important that our referees were proactive. They have had many good conversations with the players. Without naming any names, the refs have singled out those they know are slow and had big conversations with them. So there has been a good feeling as everyone tries to get on with it. Hopefully, this solves a problem that has been in the game for a long, long time. If nothing else we are sending a good signal to the world that we are taking this seriously.”

The chats Bjorn refers to have taken place over the last few months. As Macfee pointed out, there is more to this than just players playing slowly. Other factors were coming into play. Ignorance of basic rules was one of the most prominent – and irritating. Too often, referees were being called out to adjudicate rulings the players really should have been able to sort out for themselves. So education on the seven or eight basic rules was required.

“We now have mandatory rules testing for every player on tour,” continued Macfee. “They get two chances to pass and if they don’t, either myself or (chief referee) John Paramor will be wanting to know why. We will sit them down and analyze where they are going wrong. It’s funny though. Everyone seems to be taking it seriously. Every time I’ve gone into the player’s lounge this week I’ve been stopped by someone and asked about one of the questions in the test. So it’s a talking point.”

As an extension of that interaction, the tour has instituted what might be termed a “pod system,” where new members from the qualifying school and the Challenge Tour have been placed in groups of eight and assigned a referee they can approach with any issues.

“Because we don’t have the resources, we can’t have as many officials on the Challenge Tour as we do on the main tour,” explained Macfee. “Because they are placed under less scrutiny, it is, therefore, easier for players there to develop a slower game. Those are the guys we have been talking to. The sooner they realize they have to play quicker, the better.”

Not a bad motto for any tour, come to think of it.

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By John Tully-Jackson
The European Tour has doubled down on its blueprint to combat slow play with a revision set to put the worst slowpokes under the microscope as early as this week’s HSBC Abu Dhabi Championship.

Changes to the four-point plan initially published in August to increase the powers of referees to crack down on players who have multiple ‘bad times’ over the course of a tournament were unveiled at the Rolex Series event on Tuesday.

Players will now be docked a penalty stroke for two slow-play violations over the duration of a tournament whereas the initial guideline was for two violations in any one round.

The Rolex series event is the first time this new power will be given to assist referees in their ongoing effort to battle slow play.

Any player that twice exceeds the time limits, both for being ‘in position’ over the ball (85 and 70 seconds for the first and second third players in the group respectively) and out of position (50 and 40 seconds for first and second/third to play respectively), will incur an immediate one-shot penalty.

While referees do have a discretionary leeway of an extra 10 percent of time if they feel a player takes longer to get into position to hit a shot, a ‘bad time’ will be assessed should that player err into the extra 10 percent a third time.

Players will have the ability to ask for a time extension once per round, adding 40 seconds to the allotted time for that shot. This can only be requested once and must be made clear to the referee before the exceed their time limit.

Also being trialled this week is the ‘Pace of Play’ timing system. It uses the latest technology to track groups and ensure everyone is where they should be on the course.

Along with reducing the minimum number of field sizes across events and increasing the gaps at the weekend so that groups flow better, the European Tour is moving in the right direction, spearheaded by European Tour Chief Referee John Paramor.

“The tougher measures which come into effect in Abu Dhabi empower our referees to more effectively target slower players. Changing the regulation for an immediate one-shot penalty to now be triggered by two bad times in a tournament instead of a round will force slower players to consistently ensure they play within timing regulations,” he said.

“This is part of our wider, robust policy to tackle slow play but our fundamental advice to all players remains consistent – they should be ready to play when it is their turn.”

Under his guidance, the referees at Abu Dhabi Golf Club have been given a brief to focus on players who are seen to be regularly taking too much time, regardless of them being ‘in position’ on the course. If there is a breach of the prescribed time limits in this situation, they will incur a ‘monitoring penalty’, which doesn’t count toward the one-stroke penalty in that tournament.

However, should the player commit multiple transgressions of either ‘monitoring penalties’ or ‘bad times’ they will face ever-increasing fines starting from €3500. The fines for the number of times repeat offenders have been put on the clock have also been increased.

Time is now literally money.

Buy tickets to the 15th Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA

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By Brian Wacker
The 2019 season in professional golf was memorable for many reasons, not the least of which being the year’s Big Three: The magnificence of Tiger Woods’ Masters victory, the dominating major performances of Brooks Koepka and the remarkable week-to-week consistency of PGA Tour player of the year Rory McIlroy.

But it was also a year filled with controversy, on the course and off it. Perhaps that was simply a product of the social-media times we live in, or a larger divisiveness that has become more pervasive in all areas of life. Whatever the reason is, has there ever been a year filled with so much drama?

So, as another year comes to a close, here’s a look at 14 of pro golf’s most controversial stories of 2019. Tis’ was the season, all right.

RELATED: Golf World’s Newsmakers of the Year for 2019

Caddiegate: Who would have thought golf’s version of Mr. Rogers (or so many believed) would see his otherwise sterling reputation called into question? It turns out no one likes a cheapskate, though, which is what Kooch (or Mooch as some galleries derisively called him) was branded after his victory at the Mayakoba Golf Classic last fall, when he paid just $5,000 of his $1.3 million winnings to the local caddie he used in the event, David (El Tucan) Ortiz. Once the news surfaced in January, the negative reaction caused Kuchar to eventually apologize and make El Tucan whole with $50,000 in total. Perhaps the most amazing thing of all? In the face of this (and another controversy we’ll get to), Kuchar put together one of the best seasons of his career with two wins, two runner-up finishes and more than $6 million in earnings.

Rob Carr/Getty Images

The new Rules of Golf: USGA chief Mike Davis described the January rollout of the most sweeping changes to golf’s code in 60 years as “a huge success.” Players had a different initial take, however, as they struggled to adjust. Justin Thomas described them as “terrible.” Adam Scott said they were turning the game into a “laughing stock.” And Rickie Fowler made a mockery of the new drop procedure. Things grew uglier when the USGA got into a tweet spat with Thomas before the association relented. The noise from everyone eventually—and thankfully—subsided, but not before a few months of squabbling and consternation.

Slow play: If you remember the painstaking length of time it took J.B. Holmes to play his final round at Riviera (5½ hours!) more than his actual win at the Genesis Open, you wouldn’t be alone. It was yet another instance of slow play becoming a public lament for fans—and even fellow players. Holmes’ pedestrian ways resurfaced during the final round of the Open Championship, his playing partner (and outspoken slow-play critic) Brooks Koepka unable to (completely) hide his disgust. But Holmes’ methodical ways were overshadowed when video of Bryson DeChambeau’s dawdling at the Northern Trust went viral. Koepka once more went public with him anger about the issue, calling out DeChambeau by name, a rarity amongst the brotherhood. Both the PGA Tour and European Tour have plans to address the issue in 2020, but will it be enough for slowpokes to truly pick up the pace?

Daniel Shirey

Saudi International: The European Tour’s decision to hold an event for the first time in Saudi Arabia set up its chief, Keith Pelley, and the players competing in the tournament—including World No. 1 Brooks Koepka, eventual winner Dustin Johnson and major champions Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose—for political blowback given the country’s suspect history on human rights. That the inaugural event took place just months after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with his death linked to the Saudi government that he was critical of, only made the decision to play the event more perplexing to some. Tour officials and players said bringing golf to the country was a way to help grow the sport in the region, but that did little to quiet naysayers, who had a new player to be upset with after Phil Mickelson announced in December he would be playing in the tournament when it’s held again in January 2020.

Sergio’s desert DQ: That a player would be disqualified from a golf tournament for “serious misconduct” generally requires, well, a “serious” bit of bad judgment. But that’s what Sergio Garcia displayed at the Saudi International. When golfers playing behind the Spaniard during the third round at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club accused Garcia of purposely damaging greens with his putter on several holes, the tour stepped in with the DQ. Garcia admitted to the act and apologized. Combined with video of him throwing a temper tantrum in a bunker the previous round, Garcia left the Middle East with his reputation battered.

Garcia vs. Kuchar: Amazingly, both men were involved in another maelstrom, this time at the WGC-Dell Match Play in March. Garcia and Kuchar met in the quarterfinals, where on the seventh hole at Austin Country Club, Garcia missed a short putt that Kuchar claims he would have conceded had Garcia given him time to do so. But Garcia moved too quickly to the ball, and an official said that the rules don’t allow for a putt to be given retroactively. The incident engendered bad blood when a few holes later Garcia suggested Kuchar concede a hole to “make things even.” Kuchar eventually won the match, and the two came out with an awkward video a few days later in which they claimed things were smoothed over. OK, then.

Warren Little

Brooks vs. Brandel: From calling Koepka’s weight loss ahead of his photoshoot for ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue “reckless self-sabotage,” to questioning his toughness, to wondering if he is truly great, Chamblee might be most responsible for Koepka’s success in 2019 more than any workout or work he put in on the course. And if you’re looking for the spat’s true zenith, well this might be it:

RT @dylan_dethier: please, nobody tell Brooks Koepka https://t.co/bWkeoOlCXo pic.twitter.com/DJ7CYbZO8h

— Brooks Koepka (@BKoepka) May 4, 2019

Backstopping back in the spotlight: The practice of “backstopping” has been a much-discussed issue on the PGA Tour, but the debate moved into the women’s game in February at the Honda LPGA Thailand. During the second round at Siam Country Club, Ariya Jutanugarn chipped her third shot to within a few feet of the hole on the par-5 18th, setting up a short birdie putt. Before Jutanugarn marked her ball, however, she waited as one of her playing partners, Amy Olson, facing a similar chip, went and played her shot. Olson’s chip wound up hitting Jutanugarn’s ball, a seemingly classic case of backstopping. Olson and Jutanugarn laughed and fist-bumped as they walked to the green, which only made things feel less coincidental. Both Olson and Jutanugarn are highly respected players on tour and each vigorously defended their actions, saying there was no purposeful intend side-step the Rules of Golf. The LPGA assessed no penalty, but the incident reignited the fierce discussion on whether the practice belongs in the game.

John Daly and a cart: Nothing quite says major championship like John Daly cruising around in a cart during the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black, a smoke in one hand and a Diet Coke in the cupholder. The PGA of America approved Daly’s use for the cart, citing ADA laws. It was an image that didn’t fly with the R&A, which denied Daly the use of a cart for the Open Championship at Royal Portrush (different country, different laws), so he withdrew from the event.

J.D. Cuban

Hank Haney: It was one thing for Hank Haney to be unaware the U.S. Women’s Open was being played in a particular week, or where it was being held, but things quickly spiraled on his SiriusXM PGA Tour radio show when he predicted that a Korean would win and followed with, “I couldn’t name you six players on the LPGA Tour. Maybe I could. Well … I’d go with ‘Lee,’ if I didn’t have to name a first name. I’d get a bunch of them right.” Haney, a longtime Golf Digest teaching professional, apologized shortly afterward for the comments but doubled down on Twitter, touting that he was “right” when South Korea’s Jeongeun Lee6 went on to victory at the Country Club of Charleston. Haney never returned to SiriusXM, starting a new program on iHeartRadio, and filed a lawsuit in December against the PGA Tour, alleging it harbored a “vendetta” against him.

Non-conforming drivers: This time it was the R&A at odds with a player, Xander Schauffele, when word got out that the 25-year-old’s driver had failed testing on Tuesday of the Open Championship. “The R&A, they pissed me off,” Schauffele said at the time, “because they attempted to ruin my image by not keeping this matter private. This is me coming out and treating them the exact way they treated me.” Never mind that it appeared Schauffele might have been the one to first mention to the press that his driver had failed the test. Schauffele’s was one of 30 drivers tested, and the episode was another ugly one between one of the game’s young stars and a governing body.

RELATED: The 9 most interesting equipment stories of 2019

LPGA Q-Series advice problem: Kendall Dye claimed to be surprised to learn that she had violated Rule 10-2 for soliciting advice during the sixth round of LPGA Q-Series in November. On the tee of the par-3 17th hole at Pinehurst No. 9, Dye gestured to playing partner Dewi Weber’s caddie, Jacqueline Schram, to confirm what club Weber was hitting, something Dye claims is common on tour. But when the third player in their group, LPGA veteran Christina Kim, brought this up to a rules officials, Dye was hit with a two-stroke penalty. So was Weber, even though she was unaware of what happened, because of her caddie’s involvement in the matter. Somehow, though, it was Kim who seemed to receive the most criticism for her part in the affair, having to defending herself on social media by noting that players are responsible for knowing the rules and that it was her responsibility to protect the rest of the field.

Bio Kim suspension: It’s understandable that the 29-year-old South Korean was admonished by the Korean Tour when he made an obscene gesture to fans during the final round of the DGB Financial Group Volvik Daegu Gyeongbuk Open. But Kim, a former PGA Tour pro, didn’t get hit with some small fine. Rather he was suspended for three years for flipping off a fan whose cellphone camera shutter went off during his swing. Kim received plenty of support from those deeming the penalty too harsh, but in Korean culture such actions carry more gravity. Eventually the KPGA backed off but still suspended him for a year.

Bio Kim

Patrick Reed vs. the sand: A year after embroiling himself in a Ryder Cup controversy, Reed was at it again, this time at the Hero World Challenge. During the third round, TV cameras showed Reed twice knocking away sand from behind his ball while taking a couple of practice swings in a waste bunker. Reed was penalised two strokes for improving the line of his stroke, but claimed he had no ill intent and that the cameras caught him at a bad angle. This only fostered more negative chatter toward him. The controversy followed Reed the next week to the Presidents Cup in Australia, where the home team’s fans were relentless with their insults. Reed’s caddie, Kessler Karain, eventually got into an altercation with a fan, resulting in the looper being removed from the bag for Sunday’s singles matches—and providing one last controversy in a year littered with them.

The post Golf’s biggest controversies of 2019 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
Earlier this year, the European Tour announced a plan to combat the slow play problems that have plagued golf for years. In short, one-shot penalties will be doled out more quickly, along with increased fines, beginning next season.

On Sunday, Thomas Pieters made his own statement.

Pieters was first off as a single in the final round of Italian Open on the European Tour. Granted, that means he wasn’t in contention and had a lot less at stake than players at the top of the leader board, but he still acquitted himself alright. The 27-year-old Belgian shot even-par 71 and did so in 1 hour, 59 minutes—the same score he shot the first two rounds of the tournament.

A nice side benefit? He burned more than 1,300 calories doing so. It’s not as if he was running from one shot to the next, either. According to a fitness app he was using, Pieters’ heart rate was actually lower than normal for a golf “workout.”

Afterward, Pieters tweeted, “Make golf great again,” with the graphic that showed his calories burned, average heart rate, max heart rate and time spent.

Pieters is the latest player to prove that playing slow doesn’t necessarily mean playing better.

In 2016, Kevin Na played the final of the Tour Championship, also as a single, in the same amount of time. He shot the same score, too, with an even-par 70 at East Lake.

“It wasn’t like I was quick-hitting it,” Na said at the time. “I was running in between shots, but when it was my turn to hit, I read every putt from both sides, and I took my time. I was trying to also shoot a good score because it doesn’t matter how fast you play, if you put up like a 78 or an 80, it really doesn’t do any good. And I really wanted to break par.”

A year later, Wesley Bryan was even better, shooting a 69 in the final round of the BMW Championship, where he raced around Conway Farms in a scorching hour and 28 minutes.

The point: Playing slow doesn’t necessarily add up to shooting a lower score.

The post Thomas Pieters makes statement by flying through his round in less than two hours appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
One month after announcing a four-point plan—regulation, education, innovation and (reduction of) field sizes—to counter the cancer that is slow play in professional golf, the European Tour is proving as good as its word. At this week’s BMW PGA Championship, two of those four building blocks will be in play.

Because of the tournament’s shift from late May to September, the field at Wentworth has dropped from 156 to 132. That has to do with the availability of less daylight, but another variable in the tour’s equation—innovation—is also part of the plan to get everyone around Wentworth’s West Course in timely fashion. All 44 three-balls will be tracked by a GPS system that will help the referees monitor pace of play and pinpoint each group’s position relative to those ahead and behind.

“A lot of the time players are unaware that they are out of position,” said John Paramor, the European Tour’s chief referee. “So we felt that we would like to find a method that would tell them when they are. So we are trialling this week a system where they will have that information on five tees [Nos. 4, 7, 10, 13 and 16]. The previous group’s time will be recorded when they walk off the green. Then that time will be deducted from that of the next group, who will then be able to tell if they are within time.”

Specifically, each monitor will operate a colour-coded system, similar to a traffic light. If the number shown is red, then that group can expect to be monitored by the rules team very soon thereafter. If it is green, the players are in good shape and in position with the group ahead. Amber means the group is only slightly out position, but the players should be aware that they are going to have to move a little quicker.

“Going forward, we will want to see those numbers available on every hole,” Paramor said. “There will be a tag attached to someone in each group. This week it will be the score recorders. That also relays information to headquarters. All the referees on the course—who will each have a tablet—will know where everyone is on the course.”

Talking of tags, all the referees will be wearing one, so they’ll be able to identify on their tablets the exact location of their colleagues.

“We all need to know where each other are,” Paramor said. “It’s amazing how much time is wasted when a call comes through for a referee. That reaches us pretty quickly, but if the person in the area does not respond—either through not getting the call, or he is already giving the ruling—the two next-nearest officials race to get there, only to find they are not required. The tablet system eliminates that.

“We are very much in the developmental stage with this,” Paramor said. “It is a useful tool. It’s not going to make players play faster. But it will provide information. Players will be more aware. So hopefully they will take it upon themselves to get back in position without us having to tell them.”

Not surprisingly, this latest move by the European Tour has been met with almost universal approval from the players, especially the faster-moving members of the community. But there are doubts, too. And maybe a little cynicism. Only a little tongue-in-cheek, former Ryder Cup player Nicolas Colsaerts suggests attaching a buzzer to the body of potential slow players. And when they are deemed to be out of position, an electric shock is administered to a part of the body best left unmentioned here.

But Colsaerts says the overall plan “has to be a good thing—anything that tackles this issue, which has been on the table for too long. My only problem is that slower players don’t normally have much awareness when it comes to what is going on around them. Are these boards going to be in their faces enough to make them realize they are playing too slowly? Normally they have no idea when they lose touch with the group in front, a situation that is invariably pretty obvious.”

Anyway, in conjunction with this week’s efforts, every tour player, from rookie to veteran, is also going to be tested on what Paramor calls “the six or seven basic rules.” The 45-minute interactive test—taken by phone or online—will involve a series of multiple-choice questions, with 75 per cent success representing a passing mark. Sadly, however, the results will not be made public.

“We are allowing the players to use the rule book,” Paramor said. “All the answers are in there. If they don’t make it to 75 per cent first time ‘round, they get another go at it. Exactly the same test. But if they fail again, they get 45 minutes to an hour sitting down with myself or [fellow referee] Andy Macfee. Personal tuition. If they want to avoid that—and most will—they need to pass the test.”

The post European Tour introduces red lights for slow play (and an open-book rules test) appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

WE’RE BUYING

Korn Ferry Tour Championship: I’m not one of these golf purists who is going to tell you the KFT season finale was better than the Tour Championship, but it contained incredible drama in its own way, as usual. Watching guys go back and forth from having a job on the PGA Tour next season to being on the outs was riveting, and Doug Ghim provided the event’s lasting moment when he sunk this tester for par on 18 to graduate to the big leagues:

Intensity.
Passion.
Jubilation.@DougGhim is #TOURBound. pic.twitter.com/sz8tlOIkK6

— Korn Ferry Tour (@KornFerryTour) September 2, 2019

What a fantastic reaction by Ghim, who was one of nine players to jump into the all-important top 25 of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals points list. Of course, there were others who wound up outside the bubble. But let’s stay positive here. Putting up with the end of summer is sad enough.

Tom Lewis: This 28-year-old Brit needed no such drama at Victoria National. The former can’t-miss prospect couldn’t miss all week, winning by five shots to earn his PGA Tour card for the first time. Even more impressive is this was Lewis’ first start on the Korn Ferry Tour this season. And we don’t just mean since the Web.com Tour switched to being called the Korn Ferry Tour. No, this dude just carpetbagged his way to a PGA Tour card.

Stacy Revere/Getty Images

But good for him. And now he has the “good problem” of choosing whether to play predominantly on the European Tour or PGA Tour next season. Just a gue$$, but Lewi$ will play more in the U$A.

Sebastian Soderberg: The 28-year-old Swede (It was a good week to be 28) won a five-man playoff at the Omega European Masters that included Rory McIlroy. Not a bad way to pick up his first European Tour title.

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

Kudos to Rory as well for not just showing up and going through the motions for a sponsor following his Tour Championship/FedEx Cup triumph. Or maybe he was just going through the motions, but he’s that good.

Lucky bounces: Especially when you haven’t won in nearly five years. Wes Short Jr. looked like he’d come up short again when his final approach shot came up short, but he used the rocks in the hazard to his advantage (Savvy!) and wound up two-putting for birdie and the win at the Shaw Charity Classic.

Can’t make this stuff up …

Wes Short Jr.’s second shot into the par-5 18th looked like it was heading into the hazard.

Thanks to the help of a rock, the ball landed on the green and Wes went on to make birdie for the @ShawClassic win. pic.twitter.com/KAQY6KDobi

— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) September 2, 2019

“Good, clean living!” as my friend Roks used to say.

WE’RE SELLING

(My) unlucky weather: For important events, that is. Three weeks after playing only three holes in my first PGA Tour Pro-Am, I played a total of four holes in the only member-guest I was invited to this year. Womp-womp. This time, I managed to show up to lovely Aspetuck Valley Country Club on the one part of the one day that it stormed amid two weeks of perfectly glorious weather. At least it wasn’t raining (torrentially) when we took our group photo. That happened seconds later.

Thanks to my buddy Al for the look, but seriously, everyone, do NOT invite me to any important golf function going forward.

Paragliding: We’ve seen people doing this at places like Torrey Pines, but in Switzerland, Rory McIlroy had to back away from a shot because he was worried about hitting them:

Wait, a Paraglider? ?

Everyone wanted to see Rory McIlroy today… pic.twitter.com/7LhYX3X9t8

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) August 29, 2019

How rude! Also, this looks dangerous! You couldn’t pay me Rory McIlroy FedEx Cup money to go up on one of those.

Brandel vs. Bob: Brooks Koepka’s dad, Bob, went after Brandel Chamblee on Twitter over the weekend. I love seeing someone stick up for his sons, and the back-and-forth was entertaining, but it was also a bit silly considering how much crow Chamblee has eaten regarding his Koepka commentary:

They say the NBA offseason has become more interesting than the season. If this is how golf’s offseason is about to go, sign me the hell up.

Brooksy’s dad taking runs at Brandel. America’s Guest catching multiple strays. Let’s light this candle and really live under par in Q4! pic.twitter.com/fquHoMcJRP

— Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) September 3, 2019

Not that I’m complaining. Keep this Twitter beef going, guys!

RANDOM PROP BETS OF THE WEEK

—There will be another five-man playoff on the European Tour: 1 MILLION-to-1 odds
—Tiger will win another major: 3-to-1 odds (Actual odds. Um … tempting.)
—I will never go paragliding: LOCK

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Tiger and mini-Tiger watching Rafael Nadal (Sorry, Roger) at the U.S. Open:

Like father, like son. ?@TigerWoods and his family attended the men's singles match between Rafael Nadal and Marin Cilic at the U.S. Open on Monday. pic.twitter.com/mREsyxTPir

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) September 3, 2019

So cute. Tiger also unleashed a pretty ferocious standing fist-pump and I’ve never felt more excited watching tennis:

Game recognizing game. ?pic.twitter.com/xqLFNnFhDi

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) September 3, 2019

Good to see. That surgically repaired knee must be feeling better.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (TOUR PRO DIVISION)

As my colleague, Chris Powers, so eloquently put it, “Eddie Pepperell can’t stop, won’t stop roasting Bryson DeChambeau for slow play.”

We don't deserve Eddie Pepperell. pic.twitter.com/DurrrQJEFz

— Chris Chaney (@Wrong_Fairway) August 30, 2019

Good stuff, Eddie. Golf needs more mid-round interviews.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (NON-TOUR PRO DIVISION)

Introducing Silvia Rosenberger. She’s from Germany and she can putt the freaking lights out. At last week’s World Amateur Handicap Championship, Rosenberger won a $5 putting contest and got one crack from 60 feet for $25,000. You can guess what happened:

ICYMI: Epic moment at the Myrtle Beach World Am last night when this German golfer casually drains a 100 footer to win $25,000!

How much beer do you think she had to buy everyone after???#MBWorldAm #MyrtleBeachGolf pic.twitter.com/v0a0zthMmv

— Myrtle Beach Golf (@MyrtleBeachGolf) August 31, 2019

Well done, Silvia.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“To have it all come down to one putt is pretty surreal. It’s one of those things where if you make the putt, it does wonders for you, and if you miss it, it could go the opposite way. Now that I’ve finally made the putt, it feels like I have the opportunity to make some noise on the big tour and I’m just really, really excited.” —Doug Ghim after earning his PGA Tour card on the 18th at Victoria National on Monday.

Good to hear, Doug. Because you only get one week off before the PGA Tour season starts.

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITIES PLAYING GOLF

When Justin Timberlake needs a bunker lesson, he goes to one of the best: Rory McIlroy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1rFfrRn9U_/?utm_source=ig_embed

And how about the Green Bay Packers dressing up as “Happy Gilmore” characters?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1uCidahZV0/?utm_source=ig_embed

Impressive. But … where the heck is Shooter?!

THIS WEEK IN PHIL BEING PHIL

Phil had Justin Thomas on an episode of “Phireside with Phil” to tell another great story about Phil (although, we’re still waiting for that second part … ):

One of my favorite people on Tour …

My man JT (@JustinThomas34) joins me for a 2-part series to tell stories when we first played together. #PhiresideWithPhil pic.twitter.com/e0OhAcVYow

— Phil Mickelson (@PhilMickelson) August 29, 2019

And Mickelson reminded everyone how great his calves are:

Let us not forget. #CalvesLikeAdonis pic.twitter.com/raP1uIUB6I

— Phil Mickelson (@PhilMickelson) August 27, 2019

Running on the beach while holding weights is going to be featured prominently in his “Body By Phil” fitness series.

THIS AND THAT

It looks like Patrick Reed has a sweet new ride:

Great to be back in Hamburg, Germany for the Porsche European Open! Before I left, I broke in my commemorative Masters GT2RS! Excited to play the next three events on the @EuropeanTour. #PEO @KLMOpen, @BMWPGA #1of1 pic.twitter.com/SP5XGIzJcb

— Patrick Reed (@PReedGolf) September 3, 2019

It’s good to be a Masters champ. … Congrats to Hannah Green for winning her second LPGA title by one shot over Monday qualifier Yealimi Noh. Congrats to the 18-year-old Noh for even coming close. She’ll be back. … Shout-out to Golf Digest Executive Producer of Video Christian Iooss, who broke his leg in a surfing accident over the weekend. Yet another reminder of why you should retire from all sports and activities other than golf once you turn 25. Feel better, Iooss. … And finally, my daughter is convinced I’m Tim Robbins/Andy Dufresne from “The Shawshank Redemption”:

My daughter is convinced I’m @TimRobbins1 as Andy Dufresne (?), so, yeah, it’s a great day… pic.twitter.com/7tOSsyjFPC

— Alex Myers (@AlexMyers3) August 29, 2019

And I don’t plan on correcting her anytime soon! Also, Tim Robbins liked this tweet. Man, I love Twitter.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

What’s the best movie of all time (Other than Shawshank)?
Does Silvia lose her amateur status after winning the $25K in the putting contest?
How do you say “Quid pro quo” in German?

The post Tiger Woods roots for Rafael Nadal, Brooks Koepka’s dad goes after Brandel Chamblee, and the luckiest bounce of 2019 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.