Patrick Cantlay responds to Brooks Koepka’s slow-play remark

Two days after Brooks Koepka called he and Viktor Hovland out for playing “brutally slow” Sunday at the Masters, Patrick Cantlay got a chance to defend himself.

Following his co-runner-up finish to Jon Rahm at Augusta National, Koepka was asked about the final round’s pace of play, which was just under 4 hours, 50 minutes, in his post-round press conference. Koepka responded, “Yeah, the group in front of us was brutally slow. Jon went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”

Just ahead of Koepka and Rahm were Cantlay and Viktor Hovland. A few videos of Cantlay’s round have been widely circulated on social media, most notably one showing Hovland already chipping from the other side of the creek on No. 13 while Cantlay and his caddie had some 75 yards left to walk. (For context: Cantlay yanked his drive across the creek and nearly into the woods and ended up having a 155-yard third shot into the green.) Then there was the screengrab from Sunday’s broadcast that showed Koepka and Rahm visibly frustrated with waiting on No. 16 tee while Cantlay was just hitting the first of what would be three putts.

Of course, as we’ve discovered with Collin Morikawa’s false cheating accusation last Thursday, you can’t believe everything you see on Twitter, as it often doesn’t tell the whole story.

So, what is Cantlay’s side of the story?

“Yeah, I mean, we finished the first hole, and the group in front of us was on the second tee when we walked up to the second tee, and we waited all day on pretty much every shot,” Cantlay said Tuesday at Harbour Town, site of this week’s RBC Heritage. “We waited in 15 fairway, we waited in 18 fairway. I imagine it was slow for everyone.”