Eight-time PGA Tour winner Patrick Cantlay seemed to catch a lot of flak during the 2023 Masters over his pace of play.
However, the golfer pushed back on that assumption, saying that he was held up by the group ahead of him.
“Yeah, I mean, we finished the first hole, and the group in front of us was on the second tee when we walked up to the second tee, and we waited all day on pretty much every shot,” Cantlay said Tuesday at an RBC Heritage press conference. “We waited in 15 fairway, we waited in 18 fairway. So, I imagine it was slow for everyone.”
Cantlay and Viktor Hovland seemed to be called out during the Masters by Brooks Koepka for a slow pace of play.
“Yeah, the group in front of us was brutally slow,” Koepka said last weekend. “Jon [Rahm] went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”
Cantlay also added that the conditions at Augusta National, which included strong winds, contributed to a slower round in general.
“Yeah, one thing that’s interesting sitting on the PAC is you get all the numbers and the data, and rounds have taken about the same length of time for the last 10 or 20 years that they currently take. When you play a golf course like Augusta National where all the hole locations are on lots of slope and the greens are really fast, it’s just going to take longer and longer to hole out,” he said.
“So, I think that may have been what attributed to some of the slow play on Sunday, and then also when the wind is gusting and the wind is blowing maybe inconsistently, that’s when guys will take a long time, too. I think that’s just the nature of playing professional golf, where every shot matters so much.”
