Charley Hull’s under-play correction shows little mercy: ‘I’m quite ruthless’

When you watch Nelly Korda and Charley Hull play golf, their blazing speed is immediately apparent. There aren’t tons of conversations before every shot. Pick a club, pick a target, hit the shot. It’s easy.

You wouldn’t know that if you tuned in over the weekend to watch Annika, though.

As Korda and Hull squared off over the final 36 holes at Pelican Golf Club in the LPGA’s penultimate event of the season, the pace stopped. Playing in the final set on Saturday, the pair needed five hours and 38 minutes to complete their third round. The pace was slow until they finished the round in the evening and the sun had gone down as they played the 18th hole.

“It’s hard when you can’t really see,” Korda said. “I think it was a bit of a misplanning by starting too late for us. Anytime you’re sitting at 18 and the sun has gone down, I mean, it’s never fun.

Korda can take solace in the fact that his third round finish in the dark did not come back to haunt him as he claimed his seventh win of the season on Sunday evening. But the point remains: Slow play is a serious problem at the top level of professional golf.

“It’s funny and I feel sorry for the fans how slow it is over there,” said Hull. “We were out there for five hours and 40 minutes yesterday. We play four balls at home on a hard golf course and round in three and a half hours, four hours. It’s really crazy.”

To the LPGA’s credit, the organization is making an effort others an attempt to curb slow play, with several instances of penalties issued over the past few years. But apparently, such loose enforcement is not enough. Despite the threat of fines and penalties, rounds of five hours and more are the norm rather than the exception.

Hull has ideas on how to change that.

“I’m not ruthless, but I said, ‘Listen, if you get three bad times, every time it’s a tee [sic] penalty of shooting,” he said. “If you have three, you lose your Tour card immediately. I’m sure that would speed up a lot of people and they wouldn’t want to lose their Travelcard. That would kill a little play, but they never will.”

The punishment may be severe, but it will probably stop the epidemic of underplaying. For now, slower players can appreciate that Hull doesn’t hold its own. If that were the case, there would be a few younger players making it on the LPGA Tour.