Time is a pressing subject in professional golf this week, whether it’s a player who takes too much of it, another who bemoans an excess of it on his hands, or one who uses it to prioritize life outside the game.
Patrick Cantlay has faced sustained criticism for his pace of play in the final round of the Masters, which was charitably described as “brutally slow” by the luckless competitor behind him, Brooks Koepka. It was news but not new. Slow play is a chronic disease on the PGA Tour and Cantlay is a Typhoid Mary whose presence blights the innocent.
Cantlay did mount a reasonable defense: Augusta National’s combination of fast greens and pins cut on slopes make players more ponderous. The prosecution would counter that Cantlay is laggardly regardless of where he’s playing. Others may be graced with a pass in testing conditions, but he has long since exhausted any goodwill.
One golfer who might welcome the privilege of dawdling behind Cantlay late in a tournament is Jediah Morgan. He won the Australasian Tour’s order of merit in 2022 and now plays the LIV Golf League. Just not frequently enough, apparently. “There’s obviously quite a bit of time off with the LIV stuff at the moment, which is a little bit frustrating,” he said on the eve of the Saudi-financed circuit’s stop in Australia. “I think a lot of the guys would like to see it grow to 18 events.”
One can’t fault Morgan for wanting to maximize grifting opportunities before the Crown Prince draws his purse strings closed, but the 23-year-old’s eagerness to expand the schedule is at odds with his semi-retired or almost-knackered colleagues who said that LIV’s appeal was being able to spend more time with their families. At least Morgan will have less idle time in the coming weeks with a roster of events that will take him from Adelaide to Singapore to Tulsa.
Every scheduling decision an elite golfer makes has consequences, though not always proportionate. On Monday, Rory McIlroy withdrew from the RBC Heritage, the second time this year he has skipped one of the PGA Tour’s new designated events. Participation in the elevated tournaments isn’t mandatory in 2024, but it is in ‘23, at least for top players who want to collect the remaining 25 percent of their bonuses from last season’s Player Impact Program.
McIlroy’s WD was announced soon after a disappointing missed cut at the Masters, which fueled criticism that was both speculative and…
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