The landscape of the PGA Tour will drastically change in 2026. Pace of play has been one of the biggest issues in the PGA Tour for as long as anyone can remember. Fans are constantly made to sit through 5-hour-long dreadful rounds with indecisive golfers who get on their nerves. The likes of Patrick Cantlay and Tom Kim have often been under the radar for their disregard for following the shot clock. But instead of penalizing them, Jay Monahan & Co. had decided to prolong their stay while reducing the opportunities for others. How, you ask? Well, the PGA Tour is planning to reduce the field size to tackle the slow pace of play issue in 2026. And not everyone is excited about that.
2021 John Deere Classic champion, Lucas Glover, reflected on the topic while interviewing from the TPC Deere Run for Golf Today. He said, “I think everybody should have a voice. And I think everybody should be taken into account when decisions are made. Limiting access is not a way to grow the talent coming into the PGA Tour, in my opinion. Making the field smaller doesn’t increase competition. That’s impossible. It doesn’t make any sense.” It’s evident that he is against the idea of reducing the field size. The veteran golfer believes that reducing the field size will make the Tour less competitive, which would reduce its quality. Closing the gateways for young, promising talent to rise through the ranks also reflects negatively on the PGA Tour.
Glover also drew parallels with other sports as he said, “We’re the only sports organization that’s saying that less players means more competition. Every other sport has widened their fields, broadened to their playoffs, more games, more teams, expanding! And we’re using pace of play as a clutch to say we need less players. I don’t agree with that. I think that’s short-sighted and not the right way to go about it. We’re trying to grow the game and create opportunities for young players to be the next superstars, for consistent older players to have a place to play. Limiting that is not the way to do that in my opinion.”
Lucas, who beat Patrick in the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship in the playoffs, believes that cutting the field size is not the right solution to improve the pace of play. Even if it does end up resolving the issue. Limiting the opportunities for golfers will do more harm than good for the PGA Tour. And they can’t afford to do that in such a critical situation, especially when they are constantly battling LIV Golf for supremacy. So they should stop using the pace of play as an excuse to reduce field size and implement other methods to restrict slow play in events.
“We’re using pace of play as a crutch to say we need less players and I just don’t agree with that.”
Lucas Glover continues to share his candid thoughts on field sizes.@eamonlynch @RyanLavnerGC pic.twitter.com/onu4cTrWpJ
— Golf Today (@GCGolfToday) July 2, 2025
Interestingly, not all PGA Tour pros hold the same opinion as Glover on this issue. Let’s see what others have to say about that.
Michael Kim’s conflicting opinion about the field size against Lucas Glover
Back in October 2024, when the PGA Tour was still looking for ways to tackle the pace of play issue, Michael Kim had also shared his views about it on X. He had written, “The slow play issue on the pgatour is NOT just about a few slow guys. It’s way more of an issue of too many guys on a golf course issue. Have you guys ever played in a big shotgun tournament with 3somes or 4somes on every hole? Or even a public muni where tee times are stacked? It’s a pace of play nightmare because there’s no flow. It’s not just because guys need to play a bit faster. Guys lose golf balls, 3-putt, need a ruling, all these things end up causing a big jam. Just because you tell certain drivers to go faster doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be traffic during rush hour.”
Unlike Lucas Glover, Michael Kim believes that the large field size makes it difficult to manage the pace of play. He is not wrong as Jay Monahan & Co. can’t expect 156 players to finish the rounds within regulation time while finding the fairways and greens accurately every time. In the ideal world, maybe. But golf is far more complicated than that. And you add the difficulties of the courses and the challenges of the weather to it, and there are more chances of delays, the bigger the field. But then again, reducing the field size is also not fair to anyone who has tried just as hard to qualify in the future as they did today. So, what is the solution? Maybe the new CEO, Brian Rolapp, might have a better solution for this.
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