Rory McIlroy says that slow play in professional golf needs to be curbed.
The world number three believes that penalties should be levelled against those who take too long with their shots.
"I don't think it's fine to do nothing because it's genuinely a problem in our game," said McIlroy when asked if players could do anything to rid the sport of the issue.
It starts at our level because people try to emulate us. I've heard stories of college events and how long they take. There's no reason why it should take that long. I've sat up here numerous times and said that, you know, it has to be addressed some way.
For me, I think the guys that are slow are the guys that they get too many chances before they are penalised. So it should be a warning and then a shot. It should be you're put on the clock and that is your warning, and then if you get a bad time while on the clock, it's a shot. That will stamp it out right away.
I don't understand why we can't just implement that, like we are not children that need to being told five or six times what to do. Okay, you're on the clock, okay, I know if I play slowly here, I'm going to get penalised and I think that's the way forward.
When suggested to McIlroy that a shot clock in tennis changed behaviour, he responded:
"Yeah, look, Rafa pushes it sometimes to the limit. We don't need time to recover between shots. We have time while we're walking to the next one and think about what we're doing.
"I don't necessarily think introducing a shot clock in golf is the right way to go, but I think giving guys less opportunities to be slow; I think that could be a good start."
World number one Brooks Koepka, who, like McIlroy was speaking ahead of this week's Northern Trust tournament in New York, was in agreement with the Northern Irishman regarding the problem.
"I don't think anybody likes waiting," said Koepka.
"Especially if you're going to be sitting on a tee box for 15 minutes to hit your tee shot. I get that you can take a long time for your thought process, but once you're done thinking about it, just go. What else is there to do? That's been the problem I have.
"I think it's just gotten out of hand. It seems now that there are so many sports psychologists and everybody telling everybody that they can't hit it until they are ready; that you have to fully process everything. I mean, I take 15 seconds and go, and I've done all right.
"Sometimes they might be trying to decide what club to hit. Well, you've had a day to think about it, and it's pretty clear what the tee shot is. A lot of times it's on the simpler shots. The difficult ones, you already know what to do with it, but it's the simpler ones where guys seem to take their time."
Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
