Aronimink Golf Club showed difficult weather conditions for Friday. The forecast showed the possibility of rain and heavy winds. Now, could this be attributed to Scottie Scheffler’s group’s slow pace of play?

Scheffler, Justin Rose, and Matt Fitzpatrick teed off at 8:40 AM EDT, and they took over 2 hours to complete the six holes. This put them at the pace of taking more than 6 hours to complete their round. Golfweek’s Cameron Jourdan reported this on X. By 12 PM, they had completed 9 holes in over 3 hours and were on the 10th tee.

This is not an isolated event, as Scheffler and Rose have already faced allegations of slow play before.

At the 2023 PGA Championship, Scottie Scheffler’s play went viral. One video clip made it look like he was taking way more than usual for a shot, and it turned him into the center of a fan debate on social media. He even faced a warning from the officials at the 2025 BMW Championship. He also faced slow-play accusations at the 2025 US Open. The same thing happened at the Riviera in 2026.

Justin Rose has his own slow-play history, especially at the 2026 Masters. Fans even asked the officials to put him on the clock, as he took around 3 minutes for a conversation with his caddie, Mark ‘Fooch’ Fulcher.

It’s not just the fans who are against it; many professionals have also called for harsher penalties. Brooks Koepka has been the most vocal about it. He said in 2019 that slow play drives him nuts, and it is embarrassing. Then, in 2020, he gave the example of having just 40 seconds to play after a ball goes into the water to say that slow players should be penalized. After the 2023 PGA Championship, he commented on it and said, “I would start stroking guys.”

Charley Hull has also pitched the same solution to the slow-play issue on the LPGA.

Ironically, Matt Fitzpatrick has called slow play appalling: “That was really frustrating. It was slow today. I felt like there was a lot of stop-start,” Fitzpatrick said after his win at the 2026 Valspar Championship.

Despite a lot of backlash from fans and professionals, the issue keeps growing. The PGA Tour’s pace-of-play policy has steadily evolved over the years. Initially, it was a group-focused warning system. However, the recent policy changes have focused on a stricter enforcement model centered on individual accountability.

It was the 2020 policy that introduced individual monitoring through an “Observation List.” Harsher fines and easier pathways to one-stroke penalties were also introduced. However, the PGA Tour decided to reduce the fines for the pace-of-play policy in 2024.

Despite facing many accusations over the years, the World No. 1 doesn’t consider the pace of play a concern.

Scottie Scheffler doesn’t think much of the pace of play

“You guys are the ones watching. I’m just trying to play. I’ve got too many concerns other than the pace it takes to get around this place,” he said after a media reporter asked him about the slow-play backlash he was facing amid the 2025 US Open.

He said that it just takes time to hit that many golf balls. The 20x PGA Tour winner also pushed back on the idea that slow play is solved by simply speeding up individual decision-making. According to him, the bigger drivers are course setup, walking distance, and group size, not tiny changes like rangefinders.

He has also argued that the debate is overblown if it only trims a few minutes. Instead, he said that golf should spend more energy growing participation than obsessing over shaving 20 minutes off a round.

While Scottie Scheffler believes the pace-of-play debate is exaggerated, the reaction during the PGA Championship showed otherwise. Fans, media, and even golf professionals still see slow rounds as one of golf’s biggest problems.