Rory: If Tennis Can Hand Out Penalties For Slow Play, So Can Golf

The Rory McIlroy news from Wentworth has, so far, been mixed: he’s retaining his European Tour card after some negotiation with Chief Executive Keith Pelley (good), he opened the BMW PGA with a 76 (bad).

But as Rex Hoggard reports for GolfChannel.com, his comments on slow play add to the list of strong remarks by top players advocating penalty strokes for slow pokes. While that may not seem earth-shattering, the recent shift of players advocating penalty strokes is a change from years of players protecting slow pokes and muttering nonsense about field size.

The U.S. Open’s recent penalty of a lost point after a third violation by Rafa Nadal, got McIlroy’s attention:

Like many Tour players, McIlroy sees a reluctance to penalize players in high-profile situations and used last month’s U.S. Open in tennis and Rafael Nadal’s timing violation during a match as an example of what golf needs to embrace.

“Rafa got a time clock violation on a really big serve like at the end of the final of the U.S. Open, so if they can do it then, there's no reason why we can't do it in our tournaments, either,” McIlroy said. “It's just a matter of enforcing it and being consistent with it.”