Brooks Koepka was never afraid to speak his mind when he was on the PGA Tour but now that he plies his trade on the breakaway LIV Golf tour he can launch verbal rockets without fear of being reprimanded.
The topic of discussion between Koepka and the gathering media ahead of the PGA Championship was slow play, and rather than get someone from the PGA Tour stable to speak about the problem, a runaway horse was picked to cast his views on the epidemic that has been plaguing golf for years.
Patrick Cantlay has long been known as one of the more deliberate players on the PGA Tour who was then heavily criticised across the golfing sphere – including Koepka – for his desperately slow approach during the final round of the Masters last month. Cantlay was in the penultimate group at Augusta with Koepka and eventual champion Jon Rahm were pictured casting death stares while waiting on several tee boxes.
Koepka feels the punishment should be a stroke for players who are too slow.
“Honestly, I would start stroking guys,” admitted Koepka. “If you are going to take that long, you have to get stroked. There are certain circumstances where the wind switches, something like that, it’s understandable, but taking a while is I just think unnecessary.
“Technically I think you saw DP, they did a shot clock event. I think it was a couple of years ago, if I’m right. I can’t remember if anybody got clocked for it, but it would be interesting to see.
“I know if you follow guys around with a stopwatch this week, there will be plenty of guys that are over time and stuff like that, but I can’t remember the last time anybody was stroked. I remember the little kid at Augusta. I don’t know if anybody has been stroked since. That’s kind of the most recent one I can think of.
“There are some guys that probably definitely could be stroked.”
LIV Golf play a shotgun start across 54 holes but the four-time major winner insists he was vocal about the slow play problem during his days on the PGA Tour and he feels it hasn’t improved since.
“Yeah, it’s never quick. I was talking about it when I was on the PGA Tour too, so I’m not afraid to talk about it.
“I never was fined for anything, so I’m all right. Yeah, there’s a lot of guys out here that take their time. I think it is a problem. Technically in the rule book it says you have 40 seconds to hit your shot. I think that’s what it is. If you are taking over, technically you’re breaking the rules, right? So, I don’t know.”
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