'ruthless'

Charley Hull comes up with harshest of penalties for 'ridiculous' slow players

November 18, 2024
2185157488

Cliff Hawkins

Luckily for some of her fellow tour pros, Charley Hull (at least at this moment) doesn’t run the LPGA Tour. If she did, more words would be written in the “ou” form (favourite and behaviour), darts would be given out at the first tee and, most critically, golfers would be losing tour cards left and right.

The 28-year-old British star may have finished T-2 at The Annika at Pelican Golf Club on Sunday but was rightfully infuriated by the slow play that oftentimes seemed to grind play at the tour’s penultimate event of 2024 to a halt. Despite no interruptions from weather, it took Hull and playing partner Nelly Korda five hours and 38 minutes to finish their Saturday twosomes round—it was near darkness when they wrapped up the windy par-4 18th.

“It’s kind of hard when you don’t really see,” Korda said regarding the too-dark final hole. “I think it was a little bit of poor planning by starting so late for us. Whenever you’re sitting on 18 and the sun is already down, I mean, it’s never nice.”

The late start on Saturday was due to the second round not finishing before darkness on Friday, thus delaying Saturday’s third-round play and creating the domino effect.

Always the ideas woman, Hull made sure to touch on this problem during a late presser and even provided the LPGA Tour with a hell of a plan to fix things quickly.

“It’s crazy,” Hull stated. “I’m quite ruthless, but I said, ‘ Listen, like, if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a two-shot penalty. If you have three of them, you lose your tour card instantly. Go back to Q School.' Because I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up and they won’t want to lose their tour card. That’d kind of kill the slow play, but they’d never do that.

“Oh, it’s ridiculous. And I feel sorry for the fans. How slow it is out there. Because we’re out there for … was it five hours and 40 minutes yesterday? We play in a fourball at home on a hard golf course, and we’re around in 3½ hours, 4 hours. So it is pretty crazy.”

2185156647

Cliff Hawkins

The LPGA Tour has been handing out penalties here and there to try to curb the slow play issue, but it still seems like top-tier pros are demoralized with later rounds ending as the sun sets. Golfweek senior writer Beth Ann Nichols has even pitched the idea of shrinking The Annika's field to fix this “black eye” for the LPGA.

“It’s important to provide opportunities for players, but it’s more important to safeguard the quality of the product,” Nichols writes. “It’s for the greater good.”

The namesake for The Annika and 10-time major winner Annika Sorenstam agrees with Hull and Nichols’ frustration. “I think the pace has gotten slower and slower, even practice rounds,” Sorenstam said. “It’s gotten to the point where a lot of players don’t even want to play 18 and it shouldn’t be that way. It’s something the tour needs to address.”

We’d bet against Hull’s “ripping away tour cards” plan making it anywhere other than social media, but it’s certainly keeping the issue in the spotlight. Both Korda and six-time PGA Tour winner Max Homa reposted Hull's plans on their respective Instagram stories. Unfortunately, the LPGA Tour is running out of daylight … just like its pros.