On Friday morning at Aronimink, slow play at the 2026 PGA Championship was a major problem. So much so that Justin Thomas’s group was put on the clock. This move didn’t sit right with the pro, and he seemed to be mad at the rules official.

Cameron Young, Keegan Bradley, and Justin Thomas started at 8:29 a.m., but the crowded course slowed them down no matter how quickly they played. A rules official drove over, and Thomas was seen talking to the referee. Soon after, Thomas and Bradley were told they were on the clock.

A snippet of the scene from Sky Sports Golf shows JT moving towards the rules official with his arms open, and then another one shows him and Keegan pointing at something while conversing with the rules guy.

This was not the first time Thomas had shown frustration that week. In Thursday’s opening round, he slammed his club into the ground after a bad tee shot on the 14th hole. That moment led Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard to publicly wonder whether the Tour’s conduct policy should have been enforced. Two days in, Thomas had already shown his temper twice.

Thomas had already signaled after Thursday’s round that the day had cost him physically: “If I had any energy left, I would go to the range and hit some, but I’m absolutely not doing that.”

Other groups also had pace-of-play issues. By mid-morning, Scottie Scheffler, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Justin Rose had played fewer than six holes in two hours. Golf journalist Cameron Jourdan pointed out that this pace would push the round past six hours and could delay the afternoon groups. Alex Smalley’s group, who were leading the tournament, started at 8:51 a.m. and needed more than three and a half hours to reach the 11th hole.

Aronimink was always going to be a tough test. The Donald Ross course, set at par 70 and stretching 7,394 yards, saw 127 three-putts from 156 players in the first round, and only 32 players finished under par on Thursday. By Friday morning, wind gusts over 20 mph pushed the scoring average up to 73.1, almost a full shot higher than the already difficult 72.3 from Round 1.

The fast, contoured greens require careful thought on every chip and putt. While that does not excuse taking three and a half hours to play eleven holes, it helps explain it. The slow pace was made worse by the course, but the issue has been around long before Aronimink.

The enforcement process is straightforward. Rule 5.6b lays out the steps: an official warning, then individual timing, followed by a one-stroke penalty for a second bad time, two strokes for a third, and disqualification for a fourth. A second bad time also brings a $50,000 fine. Players who average 45 seconds or more per shot over ten tournaments are put on the observation list and watched more closely in future rounds.

A previous report on the Tour’s pace-of-play record showed that the PGA Tour went three years without handing out a single stroke penalty on the main circuit. This leads to the real question: what value does a framework have if it is never enforced?

Not just at this major, but slow play has been a persistent issue in golf.

Golf’s slow-play problem has a paper trail and a short memory at the PGA Championship

In 2019, Bryson DeChambeau’s pre-shot routine brought the problem into the spotlight, forcing the PGA Tour to promise tougher enforcement. Four years later, at the 2023 Masters, Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland took almost five hours to finish their final round.

Cantlay’s average shot time sat at 38 seconds during that period, just two ticks below the maximum allowed, and LPGA icon Dottie Pepper said the issue had been “gnawing at me and a lot of people for a while.”

The Tour has tried to address slow play with distance-measuring devices and smaller field sizes. These changes have led to minor improvements—approach shots are a few seconds faster, and rounds are slightly shorter. But the core issue remains. The problem is still there, as seen on the 11th fairway at Aronimink.

Golf has discussed slow play at every major for years. The clock was visible at Aronimink, but the real question is whether anything will change before the next major. So far, the sport has not shown the will to act.