Play was incredibly slow on day one of the 2025 Open with rounds taking almost six hours.
Conditions were fairly tricky with gusty winds and spells of rain throughout the day, and pace of play was a big talking point in the mixed area as players eventually finished up their rounds.
The big group of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas teed off at 3.10pm local time and didn’t finish until gone 9pm in Northern Ireland, with the final group at 4.10pm finishing up in near-darkness.
Pace of play continues to be a huge issue in professional golf, and we saw slow play at Oakmont in last month’s US Open where a full field of 150+ players were grouped in threes while tackling an extremely difficult course with millions on the line.
It’s the exact same this week, and it was one particular area of the course that seemed to get the bottlenecks started. The drivable 5th is arguably the signature hole on the Dunluce Links but it seems that it was causing backlogs due to players waiting on the tee for the green to clear.
A par 3 follows, which is never ideal for pace of play before the par-5 7th where players have to wait for the green to clear before hitting their second shots.
Five groups were on the 7th hole at one stage today according to Keegan Bradley, while Marc Leishman said it felt like he was on course for “12 hours” today.
Here’s what the players had to say about the slow play on Thursday at The Open…
Marc Leishman:
“Felt like we were on the golf course for about 12 hours. We’ve been on the course for three hours through eight holes. That was tough to deal with, especially coming from somewhere where we play in under 4 1/2 every week.
“You got to deal with all that sort of stuff, and I felt like I dealt with it decently well. Just got a little frustrated there.
“I thought I was playing really good and not getting anything out of it, but the conditions were tough. Hopefully just get a good one going in the morning.”
“Yeah, I think just with the conditions, I know it wasn’t super windy. It picked up as the round went on a bit. But it’s hard, there’s a few bottleneck areas where you’re reaching par-5s in two, and that generally slows things down.
“I don’t really know what you can do with the field size. Yeah, I don’t even know if the guys…
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