On paper, Matt Fitzpatrick is posing a threat to Rory McIlroy and Chris Gotterup’s title hopes. The CBS analysts’ favorite pick sits two strokes behind them in the 2025 Genesis Scottish Open. He had an outstanding second round. However, the Englishman could only manage a 1-under on Saturday to give himself the slightest of advantages. Yet, he is still very much in contention for the big title in Scotland preceding The Open Championship. However, in reality, Fitzpatrick was really struggling towards the end of the third round.
As shared by Sports Business Journal’s famous reporter, Josh Carpenter, “Amount of time it took Fitzpatrick to pull the trigger on 17 (from when CBS cut to him). IBF: ‘Just slightly over the 40 seconds, closer to 2:40.’” Setting himself up for a par on the 3-stroke 17th hole, Fitzpatrick took more than 2 minutes to complete. it. In fact, the picture attached to the tweet of a timer confirmed the actual time. The Englishman took nearly 2 minutes and 22 seconds to strike the ball.
The 30-year-old took a minute and 40 seconds more than regulation time to complete the stroke. This comes as a huge surprise since Fitzpatrick is one of the biggest critics of slow play himself. Back in 2023, he called out Patrick Cantlay during the RBC Heritage for his excruciating pace of play. He was also strongly in favor of all the pace of play policy changes the PGA Tour voted on back in November 2024. He retweeted Adam Schupak’s post about it with a quote, “He’s so right, pathetic that pace of play is spoke about every year and nothing ever gets done .”
Ironically, it’s Fitzpatrick who is in the limelight this time for slow play. And he didn’t even gain any advantage from it, as he missed the birdie in the end. The bad miss really got on Fitzpatrick’s nerves, it seems. Instead of gaining an advantage, he conceded another stroke on the 18th hole. That pushed him down to tied at third and 2 strokes away from the top. His exhaustingly slow play also infuriated many who couldn’t stand the delays he was causing.
Amount of time it took Fitzpatrick to pull the trigger on 17 (from when CBS cut to him). IBF: “Just slightly over the 40 seconds, closer to 2:40.” pic.twitter.com/aZlGrOLugc
— Josh Carpenter (@JoshACarpenter) July 12, 2025
In fact, fans raised the issue on Carpenter’s tweet, sharing their views in the comments. Let’s see what they had to say.
Fans share their frustration at watching Matt Fitzpatrick play
Matt Fitzpatrick’s absurd delay for one stroke was bound to catch a lot of heat. Especially in the current environment. The PGA Tour pros are constantly criticized for breaking the pace of play without any serious consequences. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that one fan stated, “I blame the tour for not enforcing slow play rules. The players will do whatever the officials let them get away with.” They believe that the PGA Tour wouldn’t have faced such problems if Jay Monahan & Co. had already started severely punishing its stars for breaking the rules.
Another was left so frustrated with Fitzpatrick’s indecisiveness that they confessed, “I turned it off. That was unwatchable. I will watch a replay so i can fast forward when Matt Fitzpatrick is shown.” The PGA Tour will lose a lot of them if they don’t control its players. They don’t want a repeat of the drop in ratings from 2024.
Someone raised an interesting question most fans would want the answer to: “Wouldn’t that be multiple penalty strokes?” Technically, despite going way over the allotted time of 40 seconds, it will still only be considered as 1 penalty according to the pace of play rules. Moreover, according to the banking time policy, if Fitzpatrick has banked enough time over the other strokes to make up for the extra seconds he took on the 17th, then no penalty would be imposed on him. Either way, even if it is a penalty, then it might just be a warning, as that is the punishment for the first penalty.
One of the fans brought another PGA Tour pro into the conversation as well. “Glad someone timed this. Took an eternity and Penge did likewise on his second shot ,” they said, suggesting that Marco Penge also took a lot of time to hit his second shot on the par-3 hole. Penge was grouped with Fitzpatrick in the third round and is also tied in third, along with him.
Lastly, watching the entire episode, a comment read, “Was brutal to watch,” as the fan was clearly exhausted watching Matt Fitzpatrick finish the round. In the 2 minutes and 22 seconds he took to take the stroke, the broadcast team could have shown three other golfers play their shots instead.
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