Every few years, the PGA Tour makes minor updates to its pace of play policy, often at the suggestion of its player-led pace of play committee, working to find improvements to slow play and the narratives surrounding it. What comes next would be more than “small”. But first, you’ll see it on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Starting next month, speed-of-play statistics for Korn Ferry Tour players will be made public for the first time, following a decision made by the PGA Tour Policy Board in November. Data on average stroke times has been available privately for individuals through 2026, but will now be included in player profiles and statistics pages on the Korn Ferry Tour website.
The initiative was communicated in a memo to PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour players this week, and the data will become publicly available after the Colonial Life Charity Classic, played May 14-17. It depends on the following four “objectives”, which are tailored in a particularly player-friendly way. They are listed below, verbatim from the memo shared with members:
1. Providing competitive context for fans
2. Creating positive narratives and changing the perception about the speed of play, which is currently skewed negatively
3. Correcting incorrect information and supporting members who have been wrongly labeled as slow
4. Be informative to slower players and monitor any changes in their game speed.
This move shouldn’t come as a massive surprise – The PGA Tour promised it would come 13 months ago – but it’s after a delayed release. It was at the 2025 Players Championship that Jay Monahan announced that speed-of-play statistics for the PGA Tour would reach the end of 2025, saying it was a “point of emphasis” following feedback from the Tour’s Fan Forward initiative. Like many of the changes coming to the PGA Tour these days, it has taken longer than originally promised to be implemented, and any impact this data has will likely change how the PGA Tour ultimately releases data on the world’s best players.
At the time of the 2025 announcement, it was not clear what the information would become public. But now, according to the memo, specific tournament schedules and average season schedules will be made available to each player. There will be an overall speed of play ranking that ranks the fastest players at the top, compared to the tournament average. Each shot type will also be categorized. I mean Average tee times will be divided by the same data for approach shots. Individual averages will even be made available during tournaments, providing a little update that hasn’t been shared before.
Much of this data is made possible through the Tour’s ShotLink system—the same instrument it uses to keep super-accurate statistics on shots won (not to mention data poured into sportsbooks) — which has only recently arrived in full force in KFT. It takes an army of vigilant volunteers, but the Tour hopes it can provide context for situations that have been sorely missed. It should help slower players understand the results of their processes. It should help highlight which players play at an average pace, but SEEMS slow when paired with a very fast player. And that should help the PGA Tour decide how to release that data to the top tier of pros. It’s just not clear when this will happen.
It remains very much in flux for The PGA Tour’s competitive structure moves forwardand game speed data are affected by these structures. For example, pace of play becomes extremely important as field sizes increase, and the Tour is still working to figure out how many players will be on each field. Regardless, the KFT has long been the place where rule changes can first be seen at the elite level, similar to how Major League Baseball first changed some of its rules at the minor league level. KFT, for example, currently allows rangefinders as a pace-of-play initiative. Will he reach the PGA Tour level, too? 2026 is an information collection period, with this rule in effect for the first time.
Also included in the memo were screenshots highlighting what the game’s speed averages will be going forward. In those images, mocked up for a player’s default profile, the individual’s speed-of-play ranking was placed right below the data obtained from their shots – next to the most important statistic of all.
