‘Finally’: LPGA will soon roll out stricter policy to crack down on slow play

As pace of play continues to be a hot-button issue on the PGA Tour, the LPGA has adjusted its policy.

LPGA members were informed of the updates during a player meeting on Tuesday night at the Founders Cup, this week’s tournament in Bradenton, Florida, while they also received a memo outlining the new rules, which include stricter requirements to avoid penalties, the addition of a one-stroke penalty, and narrowing which types of shots receive 10-second allowances.

“Our intention with these adjustments is to improve the pace of play, not to impose penalties and fines,” the memo reads.

An LPGA spokesperson confirmed the changes, noting they will be implemented at the Ford Championship in late March in Phoenix, but said the tour won’t officially announce its updated pace-of-play policy until next week.

The spokesperson added that while this update is a “significant step forward,” it won’t be the only solution that is made to curb slow play.

Slow-play talk dominated the final couple weeks of last year’s LPGA season, with star players Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson and Charley Hull offering their opinions.

“I’m quite ruthless, but I said, ‘Listen, if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a two-shot penalty,” Hull told reporters last November at The Annika, where Saturday’s final pairing of Hull and Korda, two fast players, needed 5 hours, 38 minutes to complete play. Two players, Carlota Ciganda and Kaitlyn Papp Budde, were fined that week, according to Golfweek, with Ciganda telling the outlet she’ll try and speed up “next year.”

“If you have three of them [penalties],” Hull added, “you lose your Tour card instantly.”

While much of the current pace-of-play policy will remain, the key focus of change deals with penalties. The current policy states that “a player in a group which is out of position may be penalized for unreasonable delay if: a. the player takes more than 60 seconds to play one shot, including putts, and/or b. the players exceeds the maximum allotted amount of time for the total strokes timed on a given hole by more than 10 seconds.” For example, on a hole in which a player takes four strokes, she is allotted 120 seconds of time. Playing that hole in 121-130 seconds could result in a fine while anything over that would be subject to a two-shot penalty.

The new criteria stipulates that the LPGA can impose a fine for 1-5 seconds over time, a one-shot penalty for 6-15 seconds over time and a two-shot penalty for 16 seconds or more over time.

According to the memo, the LPGA fined 22 players for slow play in 2024 while nine players received two-shot penalties. But had the new policy been in effect, there would have been 23 one-stroke penalties and eight two-stroke penalties.

As for the 10-second allotment, it will no longer be extended for the first player to hit a tee shot on a par-4 or par-5 but will remain for the first player to hit on a par-3, approach shots and putts.

Korda was asked Wednesday about Tuesday’s meeting, which she described as “pretty positive.” As for the new rules, Korda said, “Finally.”

“I’m very excited about it,” Korda continued. “I think that’s one of the things that I’ve just noticed over my time on tour is that we used to go from five hours, under five hours to now it’s just five and a half, typically, our rounds. I think implementing harsher rules is going to be good for the game of golf because they’re saying at the meeting, at the end of the day, [we’re an entertainment product]. If we’re taking really long out there, that’s not entertaining.”