The Players Championship 2025

Venue: TPC Sawgrass Date: 13-16 Mar

Coverage: Live radio and text commentaries of the third and fourth rounds. Follow and listen on the BBC Sport website, app, 5 Sports Extra and BBC Sounds from 19:30 GMT on 15 March and from 18:00 on 16 March

While negotiations aimed at reunifying men’s golf grind to a halt, the PGA Tour is taking steps to speed up play.

Commissioner Jay Monahan’s state of the union news conference, before this week’s Players Championship here at Sawgrass, made clear that eradicating slow play has become more of a priority than ever before for a circuit that has always indulged slowcoaches.

But this, the tour’s marquee tournament, will again be played in the shadow of the ongoing split brought about by the arrival in 2022 of the breakaway LIV tour.

This year’s Players will play out in the absence of the reigning US Open champion. Last year the Masters winner was missing and in 2023 there was no title defence.

This, of course, is because Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith all play on LIV.

Their absence from the PGA Tour is felt more keenly this week than any other. The old debate as to whether the Players is the ‘fifth’ major is no longer relevant and will not be until the game reunifies.

Here we have the most stark imperative for a deal to be done with LIV’s Saudi backers.

An agreement, though, is not imminent.

Monahan reiterated that no follow-up meetings are in the diary after the recent White House gathering with the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s governor Yasir Al Rumayyan ended without settlement.

“We appreciate Yasir’s innovative vision,” Monahan said. “And we can see a future where we welcome him on to our board and work together to move the global game forward.

“As part of our negotiations, we believe there’s room to integrate important aspects of LIV Golf into the PGA Tour platform. We’re doing everything that we can to bring the two sides together.”

Monahan added that while his organisation has “removed some hurdles, others remain”.

In other words, something has to give to end the stalemate.

And no matter how hard the golf media tried, the commissioner flat-batted every enquiry as to how that might be achieved.

Monahan does not play verbal ‘Bazball’; every non-answer dictated by the delicate nature of golf’s future.

Where he was more forthcoming, was an acceptance – at long last – that men’s professional golf has a problem with slow play. It seems steps are being taken where the biggest offenders will start to be named and shamed.

“We’ve committed to addressing the speed of play,” Monahan said as he announced working group recommendations that will be implemented to try to erase one of the sport’s biggest blights.

“We will begin publishing speed-of-play-related statistics later this season,” he added. From 14 April testing will begin on the PGA Tour’s feeder circuits to impose stroke penalties on the slowest golfers.

Monahan also confirmed that the use of range finders will be allowed at tournaments between next month’s Masters and the US PGA Championship in May to see whether this improves round times.

“We’re listening to our fans and we’re responding, and clearly this is something where they would like to see improvement,” the commissioner said.

“I think there’s a real commitment from players across the board to make certain that we’re doing everything that we possibly can to improve, and these three steps are just a start.”

This is a marked shift from an organisation that for decades insisted that slow play was not a problem. The rival LIV circuit has imposed stroke penalties on slowcoaches and now the PGA Tour is starting to respond.

“I look at this as a very positive development,” Monahan insisted.

“I think it’s pretty telling that when you’ve got six player directors that sit on our boards, and you’ve got 16 members of our Player Advisory Council, that there’s a lot of shaking of heads and there’s an understanding that this is an area where we need to improve.”

Two-time major winner Collin Morikawa says publishing data that shows which players are quicker than others, thereby identifying the slowest, is a good idea.

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t want it to be released,” said the 2021 Open winner.

“You just have to start giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedExCup (point deductions). What I’ve learned is that monetary fines are useless.”

Morikawa added: “What is there to hide, right? If you’re slow, you know you’re slow. I mean, if you don’t know, then there’s an issue.

“To me, there’s no issue with letting it out. It’s only going to make things better because then you’re either going to have a target on you, put a little more pressure and hopefully you pick it up, or you get penalised. It’s very simple.”

Double US PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas agrees that publicly revealing which players are the slowest will have a beneficial effect.

“Nobody wants to be known as that,” said the US Ryder Cup star.

“I’m the first to admit I’m on the slow side of players. It bothers me, but I’ve talked to many officials about it, like I want to know why I’m slow because obviously the first thing that any slower player thinks is that they’re not slow.”

Fans will surely welcome such long-awaited initiatives to improve pace of play on the game’s biggest tour.

But those awaiting some kind of resolution that brings the game back together are still left playing the waiting game.