The landscape of the PGA Tour will drastically change in 2026. Pace of play has been one of the biggest issues for as long as anyone can remember. Fans are constantly made to sit through 5-hour-long dreadful rounds with indecisive golfers who get on their nerves. The likes of Patrick Cantlay and Tom Kim have often been under the radar for their disregard for following the shot clock. But instead of penalizing them, Jay Monahan & Co. had decided to prolong their stay while reducing the opportunities for others. And not everyone is excited about that.

Lucas Glover reflected on the topic while interviewing from the TPC Deere Run for Golf Today. He said, “I think everybody should have a voice. And I think everybody should be taken into account when decisions are made. Limiting access is not a way to grow the talent coming into the PGA Tour, in my opinion. Making the field smaller doesn’t increase competition. That’s impossible. It doesn’t make any sense.” The veteran golfer believes that reducing the field size will make the Tour less competitive, which would reduce its quality. Closing the gateways for young, promising talent to rise through the ranks also reflects negatively on the PGA Tour.

Glover also drew parallels with other sports as he said, “We’re the only sports organization that’s saying that less players means more competition. Every other sport has widened their fields, broadened to their playoffs, more games, more teams, expanding! And we’re using the pace of play as a crutch to say we need less players. I don’t agree with that. I think that’s short-sighted and not the right way to go about it. We’re trying to grow the game and create opportunities for young players to be the next superstars, for consistent older players to have a place to play. Limiting that is not the way to do that in my opinion.”

Lucas believes that cutting the field size is not the right solution to improve the pace of play. Even if it does end up resolving the issue. Limiting the opportunities for golfers will do more harm than good for the PGA Tour. And they can’t afford to do that in such a critical situation, especially when they are constantly battling LIV Golf for supremacy. So they should stop using the pace of play as an excuse to reduce field size and implement other methods to restrict slow play in events. This isn’t the first time Glover has criticized the move.

“In my mind, there are things we could have done before cutting 25 cards,” said Glover at the start of the year of the move, the Tour made of reducing the cards from the 2026 season. “We didn’t explore anything. We just cut under the guise of pace of play.” He even made a list of 9 ways to speed up play on the PGA Tour:

1. Sprinkler heads across the course should have markings to reduce decision-making time.
2. Golfers should be allowed to use distance-measuring devices.
3. Have bunker rakers in every group to avoid delays due to bad lays from previous groups.
4. Stop allowing honorary observers as they slow things down.
5. Remove sign bearers as they cause delays on every stroke, as they need to walk along with the golfer.
6. Ban the use of the controversial Aim Point green reading method on the PGA Tour.
7. Eliminate the usage of golf carts to avoid obstructions for the golfers.
8. Every unplayable spot should have drop circles where players are allowed to drop the ball within the range if they are unable to play it from where it lies.
9. Many golfers need to be reeducated on the rules, as some of them often have extended debates with the officials on the course, looking for relief during an event.

Interestingly, not all PGA Tour pros hold the same opinion as Glover on this issue. Unlike Lucas Glover, Michael Kim believes that the large field size makes it difficult to manage the pace of play.

Michael Kim’s conflicting opinion about the field size against Lucas Glover

Back in October 2024, when the PGA Tour was still looking for ways to tackle the pace of play issue, Michael Kim had also shared his views about it on X. He wrote that the slow play issue on the PGA Tour is NOT just about a few slow guys, but more of an issue of too many guys on a golf course issue.

He is not wrong, as Jay Monahan & Co. can’t expect 156 players to finish the rounds within regulation time while finding the fairways and greens accurately every time. In the ideal world, maybe. But golf is far more complicated than that. And you add the difficulties of the courses and the challenges of the weather to it, and there are more chances of delays, the bigger the field. But then again, reducing the field size is also not fair to anyone who has tried just as hard to qualify in the future as they did today. So, what is the solution? Maybe the new CEO, Brian Rolapp, might have a better solution for this.