‘It’s ridiculous’: Charley Hull calls for slow play to face extreme punishment

Charley Hull has hit out at “ridiculous” slow play in women’s golf, while insisting serial offenders should be removed from the LPGA Tour.

Hull tied second at Annika Sörenstam’s event in Florida as Nelly Korda notched her seventh win of the year. The tournament was overshadowed by pace of play issues, with Hull among players to finish their third round in near darkness on Saturday evening. The topic has been a regular one on the LPGA Tour and shows no sign of going away.

Hull has clearly now had enough. “It’s ridiculous,” said the Englishwoman. “I feel sorry for the fans how slow it is out there. We were out there for five hours and 40 minutes in round three. We play in a four ball at home on a hard golf course and we’re round in three and a half, four hours. It is pretty crazy.”

Referees do have scope to punish players for slow play. However, sanctions involving shot penalties or fines are rarely applied at the top level of female or male golf. Hull, who is one of the quickest players in the elite environment of the sport, believes golfers should be threatened with removal from the LPGA Tour if they cannot play within allotted times.

“I’m quite ruthless but [my idea would be] if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a two-shot penalty,” Hull added. “If you have three of them you lose your Tour card instantly. I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up and they won’t want to lose their Tour card. That would kill the slow play, but they would never do that.”

In 2023, the LPGA Tour reduced the number of players making weekend cuts in a bid to speed up the closing 36 holes of competition. Three years earlier, Stacy Lewis had castigated “dreadfully slow play” at the Scottish Open.

Korda noted that the third round scenario at Belleair was far from ideal. “It’s kind of hard when you don’t really see,” said the world No 1. “I think it was a little bit of poor planning by starting so late for us. Whenever you’re sitting on 18 and the sun is already down, I mean, it’s never nice.”