Rory McIlroy could face an awkward run-in with a PGA Tour rival who has furiously blasted the introduction of a new rule which was backed by the Northern Irishman.
Earlier this month, the PGA Tour confirmed their decision to reduce field sizes with the aim of addressing pace of play issues. The announcement sparked a backlash from some players, with Lee Glover among those to hit out at the controversial change.
He accused PGA chiefs of insulting the intelligence of players in a furious rant, saying: "I think it’s terrible. And then hiding behind pace of play, I think, challenges our intelligence. They think we’re stupid.
"Don’t cut fields because it’s a pace of play issue. Tell us to play faster, or just say you’re trying to appease six guys and make them happy so they don’t go somewhere else and play golf."
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Before the change was announced, McIlroy made it clear that he would be in favour of reducing field sizes despite conceding that his view was unlikely to be shared by many of his peers.
Speaking at the Arnold Palmer Invitational earlier this year, McIlroy said: "I’m all for making it more cut-throat, more competitive. I probably won’t be very popular for saying this, but I’m all for less players and less tour cards, and the best of the best."
Glover was not the only golfer to hit out at the PGA Tour's decision, with one-time US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick adopting a similar stance.
Wading into the discussion on X (formerly Twitter), the Englishman shared Glover's rant to his own feed and added: "He’s so right. Pathetic that pace of play is spoken about every year and nothing ever gets done."
Gary Young, the PGA Tour's senior vice-president of rules and competition, is adamant that reducing field sizes will speed up the pace of play despite the protests.
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He told Golfweek: "It’s something that we’ve been saying for years that 156-man fields are too many players. It’s basically 78 players in a wave, 13 groups per side and our pace of play is set somewhere around four-and-a-half hours.
"You do the math and if they play in time par, which is basically two hours and 15 minutes, they make the turn and all of a sudden the group ahead of them is just walking off the tee because there’s two hours and 12 minutes of tee times.
"It becomes a parking lot. There’s nowhere to go. We asked ourselves: if we were starting the Tour from scratch, what would be our maximum field size?
"As we talked it through with the players on that subcommittee, there was agreement in the room that you would never build it so that groups would be turning and waiting at the turn."
