Former major leaguer Lucas Glover has called out what he called “cool baby rallies” criticizing proposed changes to stadium sizes starting in 2026.
The PGA Tour Policy Board was expected to meet on Monday to discuss several changes, the most controversial of which was the reduction of certain field sizes. Glover, the 2009 US Open champion who is currently ranked 50th in the world, said the proposal was driven by a group of people obsessed with the speed of play.
“I think it’s bad,” Glover told Golfweek. “Then I hide with the speed of play, I think the challenge is our intelligence. They think we are stupid.”
In this proposal, a full field event played on a single golf course would be reduced from 156 to 144 players. And full field events on one course before daylight saving time will be reduced from 132 to 120 players. Competitions in many disciplines will continue. to have fields for 156 players.
The number of players exempt from the PGA Tour would also be reduced from 125 to 100, although the 25 spots exempted under the proposal would retain conditional status.
The crux of the debate is that tournaments played in the fall and winter often struggle to finish the first and second rounds in the scheduled time, resulting in a 36-hole cutoff that often goes to Saturday. However, Glover said the solution is to use the existing rules rather than ending the players’ jobs.
“Don’t cut down the fields because it’s about speed,” said Glover, who estimates that the number of slow players has grown from a few to 50 since he started visiting. “Tell us to play fast, or you’re trying to appease six guys and make them happy so they don’t go somewhere else to play golf.”
It was a thinly veiled reference to the steps the PGA Tour continues to take in an effort to prevent more marquee players from playing for LIV Golf. But Glover says the board’s job is to keep the interests of the full membership at the forefront.
“There are 200 guys that this is their life and their job,” he said.
Gary Young, the tour’s senior vice president of rules and competition, said reducing field sizes “absolutely” would improve the speed of play. He said the Players’ Advisory Council meetings included discussions about what the ideal field size would be if they started touring from scratch, and that simple calculations showed that two waves of 78 players each created a “parking lot”.
“When we discussed it with the players on that subcommittee, there was an agreement in the room that you would never build for teams to turn and wait where they turn,” Young told Golfweek. “That’s when the whole idea of 144 being our maximum field size, everybody felt that that was the right number, and the math in it worked. You’ll see that some of our fields have been reduced a lot, and that’s right. until the time constraints.
“So a good example is that we play a field size of 144 players in the Players Championship, and there is not enough time for 144 players. But we always insisted on starting with the members, trying to increase the number of players who could enter the season, and sometimes, unfortunately, it hurt everyone in this competition.
“Now we’re looking at how many hours of daylight we have, and what’s the right field size for each event on the Tour. So we went straight to sunrise and sunset for about three hours between waves, which is what you do. And then that gives the afternoon wave a chance to run, the starters behind the last group making the turn and support.
“So we think we did a good job in building the schedule and finally got all the field sizes right for the future.”
The current pace of play calls for first warning the team that falls in the zone, then putting them on the clock. Only if the player has a second foul after the first warning is a stroke penalty charged.
“You have to be kind of crazy or reckless to get to that last stage,” Young said.
Glover believes the situation can be remedied by eliminating the warning and issuing fines.
“You get a better pace of play policy or enforce the one you have better,” Glover said. “When I was walking slowly and the official came up and said, ‘You guys are behind, it’s not a warning, you’re all waiting and if you get a bad time, that’s a penalty shot. Guess who’s running on his ball. That’s what we have to do.’
Glover, 45, has won six times on the PGA Tour, including victories last year at the Wyndham Championship and the FedEx St. Jude Championship to start the playoffs.
Although that wasn’t enough for him to be selected for last year’s United States Ryder Cup team, Glover is part of TGL’s Atlanta Drive Golf Club along with Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas and Billy Horschel. Cantlay is one of the PAC’s six player directors along with Tiger Woods, and Thomas is also a PAC board member.
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