CNN — It is said that a Grandma knows best. Scottie Scheffler, newly crowned The Players Championship winner, would agree wholeheartedly. Scheffler’s grandmother, Mary, could not have chosen a better week to
CNN
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With his surname, you could say that David Cannon was predestined for a career behind the lens.
Upon receiving the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Photojournalism in May, the 67-year-old was lauded for his “technical mastery and artistic proficiency.”
Yet while his first professional camera was a Canon, the Englishman’s journey to becoming one of the world’s leading sports photographers was anything but fated: he never even had any formal training.
Born in Sussex, Cannon was a talented golfer in his youth, boasting a handicap of one. Competing at a host of amateur tournaments, he finished eighth at the British Youths Golf Championship in 1974 and played alongside a young Nick Faldo at the following year’s tournament.
But sharing the fairways with the future six-time major winner extinguished any hopes Cannon had of a professional playing career.
“When I played with him [Faldo], it was like ‘Oh sh*t, I’m not even in the same league,’” he told CNN Sport. “He was just something else.”
Needing a job to cover the lack of financial reward in amateur golf, Cannon worked at a nylon sheet company, but after four years was yearning for a change of pace. When an impromptu conversation with family friend Neville Chadwick, a photographer at the Leicester News Service, offered the chance to snap some local sporting events, Cannon was all in.
Selling his car to fund a small telephoto lens and a camera – naturally, a Canon AE-1 – soon after he was sitting in a rugby stadium for a New Zealand Tour match in November 1979.
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The 24-year-old was armed with just two tips which have served as the basis of his craft ever since: “Focus on the eyes and fill the frame.”
“I was off, that was it. The lightbulb switched on,” Cannon said. “Playing golf suddenly took a massive back seat and every spare minute I had was buying cameras with spare money, taking pictures, going to games.”
In 1983, having covered everything from the Commonwealth Games in Australia to FIFA World Cup qualifiers in Honduras, he joined the esteemed AllSport photography agency. Though acquired by Getty Images in 1998, Cannon has effectively worked there ever since, specializing in golf to quickly become one of the most recognizable names in the field.
“I’ve loved every minute of it,” he said, and there have certainly been a lot of minutes to love.
Cannon has covered over 700 events and almost 200 men’s and women’s majors, according to an interview with the Ryder Cup, the biennial event he has worked at 17 times.
Cannon’s eye-watering estimates of his career stats: 3.4 million frames shot, 2.6 million miles flown, 115 countries visited, 5,000 nights slept in hotels and 13,000 miles of golf courses walked.
Yet Cannon insists it’s a necessary commitment. While sports like football will offer photographers – at the very least – the opportunity to snap celebrations almost every match, the less dynamic nature of golf can make for slim pickings.
“You can go six months at least – probably two years – without getting a fantastic final freeze picture,” he explained.
“Golf is very slow. People don’t realize how physical it is to photograph golf. You can walk 25,000 paces in a day, and all you’re getting is individual shots of golfers hitting the ball and nothing very interesting if they’re down on fairways all the time.”
Fortunately for Cannon, his career has coincided with some of golf’s most iconic players, many of whom he has come to know personally.
Keeping in touch with Faldo, he became good friends with Ernie Els and got to know Greg Norman – a trio with 12 major wins between them – and had a front row seat to the peak of the Tiger Woods era at the turn of the century.
Photographing Rory McIlroy and newly crowned US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick since they were amateurs, he has had the joy of following their journeys from the grassroots to lifting some of golf’s biggest titles.
Yet one name stands above all others: Seve Ballesteros. “Never meet your heroes,” the adage goes, but Cannon not only had the joy of snapping his all-time sporting idol, he also became a close friend.
A portrait of the legendary Spaniard captured near his home in Pedreña in 1996 remains one of Cannon’s most beloved pictures. And his shots of the five-time major champion’s iconic fist pump celebration at St. Andrews en route to a 1984 Open win are some of the most enduring images of Ballesteros, who died from brain cancer in 2011.
“It’s probably the most defining picture of my career,” Cannon said. “Of a moment, that’s my favorite.”
When Cannon took that photo, his 36-exposure camera afforded him just 25 pictures to choose from the whole sequence. Today, he would have five more pictures to choose from in a single second. Yet while technology has changed dramatically, the principles of sports photography have not.
Cannon was reminded of one of these guiding rules when – caddying for his professional golfer son Chris – he overanalyzed a swing from three holes earlier.
“‘Dad, that’s one thing you’ve got to learn, there’s a 10 second rule in golf,’” Cannon recalls his son saying. “’Ten seconds after you’ve hit the shot, you cannot get it back, you can’t do anything about it, you’ve got to put it out of your mind.’
“That rule works exactly the same in photography. If you miss it, you can’t go back and get it. If you’re at a sporting event, it’s never going to happen again. I find that quite a useful rule.”
One of the craft’s most important skills is to preemptively sense a story or moment and move to prepare accordingly. It’s easier said than done on courses spanning miles of fairway, with multiple games taking place at once, but the advice can offer great rewards.
These were reaped in abundance by Cannon at the Alfred Dunhill Cup in 1999 through his shot of basketball icon Michael Jordan and Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia engaged in a footrace across the St. Andrews fairways, once described as “the greatest golf photo of all time” in Golf Digest.
Overhearing Jordan and Garcia goading each other on the first tee, Cannon decided to stay out and track the duo past the third hole, the point at which the newspaper photographers – reluctant to trek any further from the clubhouse – decided to head back in.
“I heard Jordan say to Garcia, ‘Do you want a running race, boy?’” Cannon recalled.
“It was really good fun to follow them that day, and from that moment onwards, I walked a couple hundred yards ahead of them all the time.”
It is the sort of know-how that has kept Cannon at the top of his field for over four decades. Not bad for someone with no formal training.
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CNN
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Amir Malik is a man in love with golf. Yet golf has not always loved him back.
A devoted sports fan since his childhood in Kingston upon Thames, London, he was fascinated with golf long before he took his first swing. But knowing nobody else who played, Malik settled for a sideline view.
That all changed in 2012, when his former boss invited him to try his hand at a driving range.
“From the first ball I thought, ‘This is it. This game is incredible,’” Malik, now aged 38, told CNN.
“I’ve played a lot of sports, but there aren’t too many when you go to bed thinking about it and you can’t wait to get up to go back and play again.”
Eventually, Malik was ready to take his game to the next level. Joining a municipal club in 2017, he began competing in Sunday morning tournaments.
It was at these events that the “ugly side” of the game was swiftly revealed to Malik, who felt isolated by the jarring clash of club culture and his Muslim faith.
The discomfort would begin before a ball was struck, as Malik says he drew questioning looks at his refusal to partake in wagers over in-house competitions, as gambling is forbidden in Islam. Out on the course, stepping aside to observe salat – ritual Islamic prayers performed five times a day – further heightened his anxieties.
“You would feel scared, intimidated. How are people going to react?” he recalled.
“We always made sure we were out of the way, but you were made to feel very, very uncomfortable.”
His unease was exacerbated by the commonplace tradition of clubhouse drinking after competitions. As Malik doesn’t drink alcohol, he was left to hand in his scorecard and make an early exit.
As he improved and played more prestigious courses, discomfort often escalated into outright hostility. Malik, who is of Pakistani descent, said he has experienced racism on the golf course.
“You turn up and immediately you can feel the vibe and the atmosphere, the way you’re spoken to, the way you’re treated,” he said.
“And you’re just like ‘Wow, just because I’ve got a beard, I’m brown, and I don’t look like you, you probably think I can’t play or you don’t think I know the etiquette.
“It used to really frustrate me because you sense it, you feel it, you grow up in it, you know what it feels like. And it’s not until you hit one straight down the middle of the fairway – when you’ve smoked a drive – that people then think, ‘Oh, he can play,’ and it’s too late by then.”
Malik’s passion for golf was not soured by his experiences. On the contrary, they spurred him to scout out other British Muslims who shared his love of the game.
Encouraged by “pockets” of interest he had seen on his travels, in December 2019 Malik put a name to his new venture – the Muslim Golf Association (MGA) – and sent out invitations to a charity golf day at The Grove, a prestigious venue just outside London.
The MGA’s maiden event would be open to all religions; prayer facilities would be provided and there would be no alcohol or gambling. Malik was stunned by the response. Within 24 hours, all 72 places had been booked, with over 100 people on the waiting list by the week’s end.
The event, held in August 2020, raised £18,000 for charity, and the sight of over 60 players praying together in the Grove’s courtyard marked a watershed moment for Malik.
“That for me was just amazing,” he said. “That we could get guys together, feeling safe and comfortable and just be on our own platform.”
Since then, the MGA has partnered with the Marriott hotel chain to stage a tri-series tournament beginning in 2021, with the winners of this year’s edition securing an all-expenses paid trip to the Turkish golfing paradise of Belek.
“I looked at golf and thought, it’s a sport played by White, old, rich men, period,” Malik said. “We’ve now got an opportunity to actually show the world that non-Whites can play this game and we’re pretty damn good at it.”
The overwhelming response to MGA events among Muslim women has been equally exciting for Malik. After launching a trio of pilot sessions in Birmingham last year, 1,000 players have already signed up to the string of women-only taster events scheduled across the country over the next two months.
Malik believes Muslim women in the UK are being held back from participating in more sports because of a lack of all-female facilities and sessions.
The MGA has no dress code, which means women can play in a niqab (face veil) and an abaya (long robe) if they wish, and it hires sections of courses for its exclusive use for taster events, to ensure a comfortable experience for new players.
“The response has been absolutely incredible, mindblowing,” Malik said. “I say to women, ‘I don’t care what you wear, what you look like, just come with a smile and with a pair of trainers and we’ll take care of everything else.’ We’ve not done anything revolutionary, we’ve just made it accessible, and the demand is incredible.”
To date, MGA events have attracted over 1,300 participants. Looking forward, the organization aims to take its efforts global to reach as many new players as possible.
Growing up, Malik had to look to other sports for Muslim role models, such as England cricketer Moeen Ali. From Muhammad Ali, to Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, to Mohamed Salah, countless Muslim athletes have carved out glittering careers across a range of sports, yet professional golf offers a comparative scarcity of examples.
According to a survey cited by England Golf, the country’s governing body for amateur golf, just 5% of golfers in England are from ethnically diverse groups.
By establishing relationships with groups such as the MGA, England Golf’s chief operating officer Richard Flint believes the barriers that have contributed to a lack of diversity in the game can be understood and broken down.
“No-one should feel uncomfortable walking through the doors of a golf club or facility simply because of their age, race, ethnicity or gender,” Flint told CNN.
“As a modern, forward-thinking organization, we want golf to be open to everyone and change negative perceptions around the game that belong in the past.”
While Malik hopes to soon see Muslim players competing on professional tours, he says he did not form the MGA to produce a Muslim Tiger Woods.
“If that happens as a byproduct, then great,” he said. “But if we can get the golf industry to take a long, hard look at itself and make itself accessible, make itself open and diverse, then that’s a huge achievement.
“The golf course doesn’t discriminate. The ball doesn’t ask what color, race or gender you are … yet it’s been a very closed club that’s been open to very few people.
Malik believes it’s time for change. “Golf has a lot of exceptional values and traditions, which I still think it needs to keep firm, but it has to evolve … if it were to open itself up and let other cultures and traditions bring all that great stuff to this game, it could be absolutely wonderful.”
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CNN
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In 2013, a 14-year-old Alex Fitzpatrick caddied his older brother Matt to victory at the US Amateur Championship in Brookline, a win that secured the champion an exemption for the following year’s US Open.
The rest is history: Matt Fizpatrick would return to the same site in 2022 to clinch the major, announcing his arrival as England’s premier golfing talent.
Now, the world No. 8 has the chance to return a favor to his younger sibling.
On Thursday, the Fitzpatrick brothers will pair for the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, a PGA Tour event that will see 80 two-player teams battle it out at TPC Louisiana for a split of the $2,398,000 winner’s purse.
The triumphant pair on Sunday will also receive a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour. Though not a motivation for the field’s elite names like Fitzpatrick, for his 24-year-old younger brother – ranked 705th in the world and forging his path on the Challenge Tour – it could be life-changing.
“That would be incredible for him, there’s no doubt about that,” Fitzpatrick told CNN Sport’s Don Riddell.
“We know what’s at stake and we know what possibilities there are if he does well and, hopefully, we can do that.”
A few months after Fitzpatrick’s dramatic US Open triumph, he found himself pitted in the same field as his younger sibling at the Italian Open in Rome.
After the second round, the junior Fitzpatrick led the major champion in average driving distance by 0.36 yards – a slender gap, yes, but enough to warrant a jab via text. The reply – shared via Fitzpatrick’s Instagram – showed a screenshot of the US Open winner’s name atop the leaderboard, with his brother’s tied-18th position included for good measure.
Yet beneath the cheap shots, it’s all brotherly love, and the pair gel well on the course despite contrasting styles.
“Our games are pretty opposite,” the elder Fitzpatrick said. “I’m a good driver, he’s a good iron player. He’s a good short game and I’m a good putter.
“He wants to do as well as he can, of course he does, but for me his path is probably going to be a little bit different than mine. The golf world is very different from when I started to when he’s playing now so he’s going to focus on the Challenge Tour probably, he’s excited for that.
“Hopefully, he can follow in my footsteps.”
Matt Fitzpatrick’s perfect day? Tuna & Augusta
They will be some tough footsteps to follow.
Triumph at the RBC Heritage on Sunday, sealed with a dramatic playoff win over three-time major champion Jordan Spieth, penned the latest glorious chapter in what has been an outstanding few years for Fitzpatrick.
The fact that the victory came at Hilton Head, a long-time holiday destination for the family from Sheffield, made it even more special, as the 28-year-old realized a childhood dream of lifting silverware on the Harbour Town course.
“Moments like that, you wish time travel was real and you could go back and say, ‘This is what’s going happen in a few years,’” he said.
“I would have been amazed, it was always one that I wanted to win and it was very special to do it.”
And as if winning couldn’t have been any sweeter, it arrived in the face of overwhelmingly one-sided crowd support for home hero Spieth, with ‘U-S-A’ chants soundtracking much of the deciding playoff holes.
Spieth gestured to fans for quiet, but Fitzpatrick relished his leading role as a villain.
“It was great … I definitely enjoyed being in it,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve played in that atmosphere too often, but it’s certainly nice to perform under that pressure and I think that’s what made it mean so much as well.”
Fitzpatrick is looking forward to a role reversal of crowd bias when Italy hosts the Ryder Cup for the first time in September.
Rome’s Marco Simone Golf and Country Club will be the stage for what Team Europe hopes will be a decisive rebound after a bruising defeat at the hands of their American rivals at Whistling Straits in 2021.
Fitzpatrick, a member of that team and the similarly defeated 2016 roster, is yet to win a singles match at the biennial tournament but would touch down in Rome a far more accomplished player should he be selected.
“I’d really like to be one of the top players that week and play really well,” he said.
“I’m just excited for that opportunity and I think that’s what’s really important is to first make the team, and then look forward to it, enjoy it, and go out there and try to win some points for Europe.”
His other main aim for 2023 is to add another major to his trophy cabinet, no easy feat with the caliber of names chasing the same goal.
A tied-10th finish at The Masters signaled a strong start to the major season for the Englishman, who finished eight strokes adrift of dominant winner Jon Rahm.
The Spaniard’s second major title consolidated his reputation alongside Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy in the so-called ‘big-three’ atop the rankings. Yet Fitzpatrick – dubbed the hardest-working golfer on the PGA Tour – has no intention of accepting his place in the food chain.
“I don’t wanna just sit back and be like, ‘They’re all too good for me and I’m just happy with where I am.’ That’s not me as a person,” Fitzpatrick said.
“I’m constantly looking at ways to improve and get better, and that’s what’s really important is to keep pushing myself and try and catch them up.”
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CNN
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There’s a lot you can do in just under three minutes.
You can listen to “Speed of Life” by David Bowie, you can re-live Usain Bolt’s 100m world record run 18 times, and, if you are an exceptionally talented Premier League footballer, you can even squeeze in a hat-trick.
Alternatively, you can watch a golfer hit a single ball.
That was the situation one fan found himself in at the RBC Heritage last month, as he fired up the stopwatch on his iPhone to time Patrick Cantlay lining up a shot during the final round of the PGA Tour event.
When the American eventually swung, the clock was ticking past two minutes and 50 seconds.
In Cantlay’s defense, the video wasn’t without caveats. It was an awkward looking lie, the ball lodged in the rough behind a tree, and – with the timer at 90 seconds when first shown – it is impossible to know exactly how long the world No. 4 spent over his shot.
The problem for Cantlay, however, is that it was not an isolated incident – nor the most disgruntled reaction.
Footage of the golfer spending close to a minute standing over a four-foot putt that same day quickly found its way to the satirical side of the sport’s Twitter community, which spliced the pictures with the closing scenes of the golf comedy classic “Happy Gilmore.”
The titular character calculated and sunk his winning championship putt – one that bounced off the windshield of a car and careened leisurely around the debris of a collapsed tower – before Cantlay holed his effort, a tweet from parody account Tour Golf showed.
A week prior during the deciding round of The Masters, Cantlay had been playing ahead of the leading group, Brooks Koepka and soon-to-be champion Jon Rahm.
Koepka, whose frustrations with slow play lit the touchpaper of a fiery feud with rival Bryson DeChambeau in 2019, made no secret of his grievances.
“The group in front of us were brutally slow,” Koepka told reporters.
“Jon went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”
Yet Koepka’s comments paled in comparison to those made by one of Cantlay’s playing partners during that decisive round at the RBC Heritage, Matt Fitzpatrick. The Englishman went on to lift the title, seeing off Jordan Spieth in a playoff, but did not leave Hilton Head fully satisfied.
For Fitzpatrick, regarded as one of the fastest players on the tour, a three-ball round should never take longer than four and a half hours. To get near that is a “disgrace,” to go well past it is “truly appalling.”
“The problem is this conversation has gone on for years and years and years, and no one has ever done anything, so I feel it’s almost a waste of time talking about it,” Fitzpatrick told Sky Sports.
“I have strong opinions, but no one’s going to do anything about it. It’s like hitting your head against a brick wall. No one ever gets penalized.
“I think it’s a real issue, way more needs to be done. The thing is I really like referees over here, they are great people, but I did not see a single ref all day. There were a few shots we were waiting and I don’t understand where they are all hiding. It does become frustrating when you are waiting so long.”
1-on-1 with newly minted PGA Tour winner Matt Fitzpatrick
Further complaints came from beyond the confines of the PGA Tour.
Responding to the video of the fan timing Cantlay on Twitter, former LPGA pro Anya Alvarez labeled it “atrocious.”
“What is the point of having a pace of play rule if you’re going to allow this? I was penalized on LPGA for slow play … and it forced me to speed up,” Alvarez said.
And even the game’s greatest are weighing in, with Jack Nicklaus and Annika Sörenstam both admitting that the PGA Tour have a problem on their hands.
“It’s got to be equitable, but they need to make an example and stay with it,” Nicklaus told Golfweek ahead of the PGA Tour of Champions’ Greats of Golf event on Saturday.
“It’s not very pleasant to watch somebody stand over the ball for half an hour.”
Sörenstam added: “Nobody enjoys it and it’s not fair, we’re running out of time. Time is a precious commodity, so I think start at the very beginning and teach them to hit when you’re ready and go.
“The more we think, the more complicated it gets, so just hit and go.”
For Golf Digest analysts Joel Beall, Alex Myers and Luke Kerr-Dineen, there was a general consensus for Fitzpatrick’s outburst: blunt, but true.
As well as having a negative “ripple effect” on groups behind the slow player – akin to the chain reaction of braking causing traffic jams on a highway – it could also lead to the Tour losing valuable eyes.
“Pace of play is an issue and has been for years,” Beall told CNN Sport.
“What’s changed is that sports leagues are recognizing their consumers don’t have an infinite amount of time to devote to their fandoms and are adjusting accordingly. That golf hasn’t has amplified the existing problem.”
However, Cantlay seems unfazed. After dropping in a sensational hole-in-one during the second round of the RBC Heritage, the American tweeted video of his effort with the caption: “Playing faster!”
Quizzed on Fitzpatrick’s criticisms ahead of the following week’s Zurich Classic, Cantlay said his tenure on the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council (PAC) had shown him that round times had been relatively similar across the last decade.
“So trying to speed it up, I’d be curious to know how they’d want to do that,” Cantlay told reporters.
“I played the last two tournaments, and my group hasn’t been warned at all … I don’t know how you would want 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.
“I’m definitely slower than average, have been my whole career. I definitely take my time … I haven’t had anybody come up to me or talk to me, but I’d be perfectly happy to talk to them about it.”
Cantlay was speaking alongside fellow American Xander Schauffele, who defended his compatriot.
“All the things that have happened as of late have all been within the guidelines of the Tour and what’s supposed to happen,” Schauffele said.
“No one’s been penalized 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.
“We’re not playing like the local muni [municipal course] that the average Joe compares our time par to – we’re playing for a couple 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.”
Ironically, the PGA Tour’s Tournament Regulations handbook spends a lot of time on pace of play guidelines.
An entire chapter dedicated to the issue begins by citing the R&A and USGA’s Rules of Golf guidance that “a round of golf is meant to be played at a prompt pace.” That pace is set at 40 seconds to play a stroke, with an extra 10 seconds afforded under various circumstances, such as the first player to play a shot on a par-3 hole or on the green respectively.
“The player should usually be able to play more quickly than that and is encouraged to do so,” the guidelines state, with golfers that exceed 40 seconds – AKA “bad time” – “informed as soon as practicable” by a tournament official.
While the first “bad time” offense goes unpunished, one- and two-stroke penalties are awarded for second and third violations respectively. A fourth offense during a round warrants disqualification. A second “bad time” equals a fine of $50,000, with a $20,000 fine for each subsequent offense.
Players that average more than 45 seconds a stroke over a 10-tournament rolling period are notified that they have been put on The Observation List, putting them under direct scrutiny from the Rules Committee. Observed golfers must play each stroke in under 60 seconds.
Should a player spend more than two minutes on a shot without a valid excuse, they are hit with an Excessive Shot Time. While the first offense goes unpunished, subsequent breaks put the golfer on The Observation List and are penalized by a monetary fine, starting at $10,000.
Both The Observation List and Excessive Shot Time were introduced by the PGA Tour in April 2020 to help speed up the pace of the game.
“You talk to players, read articles, hear from fans and what gets people, what gnaws at them, are these individual habits that people have,” then-PGA Tour chief of operations Tyler Dennis told Sky Sports.
“It’s seen as bad etiquette. It’s seen as a distraction, and we’re targeting those individual moments to help their fellow competitors and assist our media partners with presentation.
“We want to keep the focus where it should be: on world-class shot-making.”
So how do you solve a problem like slow play?
One idea, floated by PGA Tour golfer Michael Kim, is to name and shame via a monthly report of the slowest players.
This was a strategy tested by 2010 Ryder Cup winner Edoardo Molinari in 2019, as the Italian – having voiced his frustration with the pace of play on the European Tour – fulfilled his promise of sharing a spreadsheet documenting the slowest golfers on the Tour via Twitter.
Arguably the most commonly suggested solution, however, is the adoption of a shot clock, akin to those used in both the NBA and Major League Baseball (even if the latter’s recent introduction has led to considerable confusion among players).
The European Tour trialed the move at The Shot Clock Masters in 2018, dishing out red cards and one-shot penalties for violations, with players afforded two “time-outs” during each round.
However, Kerr-Dineen believes a golfing shot clock would be “too messy” to enforce. Instead, he says the PGA Tour should take inspiration from the American Junior Golf Association, where the introduction of “time par” checkpoints every three holes has helped speed up the youngsters’ game.
“Each group has to reach the next checkpoint in a specified amount of time. A slow group gets two warnings, then players get a one-stroke penalty for each bad time after that,” Kerr-Dineen explained.
“It’s a simple to understand, proven system – and it works.”
Golf Digest’s Beall sees some value in shot clocks and public calling outs, but squares responsibility with those that decide where to position the hole.
“Those in charge of setting up the course on a weekly basis continue to put pin locations in tough spots on greens that are faster than they’ve ever been,” Beall said.
“Put the pins in less severe spots and slow the greens down just a touch could go a ways in alleviating the issue.”
And for Myers, the answer has been staring the PGA Tour in the face all this time: simply enforce the existing rules.
It has been 28 years since the last slow play penalty was issued to an individual at a PGA Tour regular event, when Glen Daly received a one-stroke penalty at the 1995 Honda Classic.
“We hear all the time about so-and-so being put on the clock. What’s the point of doing that if you’re not going to take the next step?” Myers asked.
“Start adding strokes to players’ scores and you’ll quickly see those guys taking time off their pre-shot routines.”
Such a change would be music to the ears of Koepka, who in 2019 was so frustrated that he offered himself up to play the role of martyr.
“I’ve tried to get put on the clock, but it doesn’t seem to work because nobody will penalize anybody. Even if I take over 40 seconds, penalize me,” Koepka said.
“I’ll be the guinea pig, it doesn’t matter. It needs to happen.”
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