|
Former major champion Lucas Glover called out what he labeled the "cool kid meetings" in criticizing the proposed changes to field sizes beginning in 2026. The PGA Tour policy board was set to meet Monday to discuss several changes, with the most controversial being the reduction of some field sizes. Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion who is ranked 50th in the world, said the proposal is being driven by a small group of people who are hiding behind the pace of play concern. "It's terrible," Glover told Golfweek. "And then hiding behind pace of play, I think challenges our intelligence. They think we're stupid." In the proposal, a full-field event played on a single golf course would shrink from 156 players to 144. And full-field events on one course before daylight saving time would shrink from 132 players to 120. Tournaments played over multiple courses would continue to have 156-player fields. The number of exempt players on the PGA Tour would also be reduced from 125 to 100, although the 25 eliminated under the proposal would maintain conditional status. At the heart of the debate is that tournaments played during fall and winter months often struggle to complete the first and second rounds on schedule, leading to the 36-hole cut moving to Saturday. However, Glover said the solution is enforcing the rules in place rather than eliminating players' jobs. "Don't cut fields because it's a pace of play issue," said Glover, who estimated the number of slow players has grown from a handful to "50" since he started on tour. "Tell us to play faster, or just say you're trying to appease six guys and make them happy so they don't go somewhere else and play golf." It was a thinly veiled reference to the measures the PGA Tour continues to take in an effort to prevent more marquee players from bolting for LIV Golf. But Glover contends the board's job is to keep the best interests of the full membership at the forefront. "There's 200 guys that this is their life and their job," he said. Gary Young, the tour's senior vice president of rules and competition, said reducing field sizes "absolutely" will improve the pace of play. He said the Player Advisory Council meetings included discussions about what the ideal field size would be if they were starting the tour from scratch, and that simple mathematics shows that two waves of 78 players each creates "a parking lot" situation. "As we talked it through with the players on that subcommittee, there was agreement in the room that you would never build it so that groups would be turning and waiting at the turn," Young told Golfweek. "So that's where the whole idea of 144 being our maximum field size, everyone felt that that was the right number, and the mathematics on it worked. You'll see that some of our other fields have been reduced even further, and that's due to time constraints. "So a great example is we play a field size of 144 players at the Players Championship, and there's not enough daylight for 144 players. But we always placed an emphasis on starts for members, trying to maximize the number of starts they could get in a season, and sometimes, unfortunately, it was at the detriment of everyone else in the tournament. "Now we looked at it from strictly how many hours of daylight do we have, and what's the proper field size for each event on tour," he said. "So we went straight by sunrise and sunset building in about three hours between the waves, which is what you need. And then that gives the afternoon wave some room to run, they're not starting out right behind the last group making the turn and backing up. "So we think that we've done a nice job building the schedule and finally getting all the field sizes correct for the future." The current pace of play rules call first for warning a group that falls out of position, followed by putting them on the clock. It's only if a player has a second bad time after the initial warning that a stroke penalty is levied. "You'd have to be somewhat crazy or not paying attention to ever reach that final stage," Young said. Glover believes the situation could be fixed by doing away with the warning and then exacting penalties. "You get a better pace of play policy or enforce the one you have better," Glover said. "If I'm in a slow twosome and an official came up and said, 'You guys are behind, this is not a warning -- y'all are on the clock and if you get a bad time, that's a shot penalty,' guess who's running to their ball? That's what we need to be doing." Glover, 45, is a six-time winner on the PGA Tour, including victories last year at the Wyndham Championship and at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to begin the playoffs. Though that wasn't enough to be selected to last year's United States Ryder Cup team, Glover is part of the TGL's Atlanta Drive Golf Club along with Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas and Billy Horschel. Cantlay is one of six player directors on the PAC along with Tiger Woods, while Thomas is also a PAC board member.
|
