Former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover continues to express his frustration with pending changes to the PGA Tour.
The proposal, which the PGA Tour Policy Committee is expected to approve by vote on Nov. 18, would, among other things, reduce field size, reduce membership and eliminate most Monday qualifying events.
So, two weeks after calling it “total crap” on SiriusXM radio, Glover slammed it again in an interview. Adam Shpack golf week.
“I think it's terrible,” Glover said.
“And I think behind the pace of play, our intelligence is questioned. They think we're stupid.”
Glover argues that PGA Tour pros are much slower these days than they were when he started more than 20 years ago. He also believes the tour is not properly enforcing slow play, an issue that has plagued professional golf for years.
“The fact that the PGA Tour is hiding behind players who play slower to change the field size… it's complete bullshit,” Glover said on SiriusXM radio on Nov. 5.
“How about speeding up the play? How about creating better policies?”
With so many players finishing their rounds after sunset or the next morning, the tour decided to reduce the size of the field to avoid this problem altogether. But Glover says this is a band-aid solution to the problem and that the tour should instead enforce a slow-play policy.
“You can get a better pace of play policy, you can have a better policy,” Glover said.
“If I'm playing slow-to-some and an official comes up to me and says, 'You guys are late, this isn't a warning, you're on time, if you're on time, it's a shot penalty.' I mean, guess who's running to the ball? That's what we have to do.”
But PGA Tour referee Gary Young said the solution is to lengthen the gap between tee times, rather than putting players' strokes on the course. Larger gaps between tee times result in the exclusion of other players, which narrows the field and reduces the size of the field.
“We asked ourselves that question.” [Player Advisory Council] If you were to start the tour from scratch, what would be the maximum field size? ” Young said.
“I talked to the players on that subcommittee and there was agreement within the venue that we would never build a facility where groups would have to queue in different turns, meaning 144 would be the maximum field size. There was a whole idea here that everyone felt that was the right number and the math based on that worked. You can see that some of the other fields have been further reduced. This is due to time constraints.
“A great example of this is The Players Championship, where we play with a field size of 144 players, and there is not enough sunlight for 144 players. We focused on starts and tried to maximize the number of starts a member could get during the season, but unfortunately, sometimes that was strictly to the detriment of the rest of the tournament. We considered how many hours of daylight there would be and what the appropriate field size would be for each event on the tour. So we headed straight for sunrise and sunset with about 3 hours between waves. This is what you need to do. And it gives you some leeway in the afternoon waves, so you don't start right behind the last group to turn and back up, so build your schedule and all that for the future. I think I finally managed to set the field size correctly.
But Grover doesn't acknowledge that one bit.
He's not alone either. Many other pros feel similarly, including Justin Lower and other travelers outside of Stardom. Still, the PGA Tour knows it must accommodate stars like Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy while also meeting the demands of its broadcast partners and sponsors. This is the main reason Signature Events was born. It's about getting all the top players to compete side by side. However, these proposals for 2026 are also being implemented for similar reasons.
Jack Mirko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation's Playing Through. Be sure to check it out @_PlayingThrough Cover more golf. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko In the same way.
