Justin Thomas openly disputed the PGA of America's pace-of-play officials on Friday at Aronimink, after his group was warned for slow play during the second round of the 108th PGA Championship.
The threesome of Thomas, Cameron Young and Keegan Bradley — all three sons of PGA professionals — were put on the clock midway through their Round 2. No penalty followed, only a warning, but with the wind gusting to 25 mph and pin positions described across the field as among the most punishing of the championship, Thomas argued that the same 'time par' cannot fairly apply day to day at Aronimink.
'We just didn't really agree with it,' Thomas told reporters afterwards. 'It's just it's hard because, you know, it's kind of the whole time par thing. Like what is time par? How can time par on this course be the same when it's blowing 25 and the pins are tough? Then if it's not. It's time for change every day. There's just so many factors that go into it.'
Thomas was at pains to point out that his group never lost contact with the players behind them on the golf course.
'We were behind. I'm not — I think that wasn't our issue or being annoyed by it. It's just the fact that we weren't holding up the group behind us,' he said. 'It seemed like every time we were on the green, they were on the tee, and so on and so forth.'
The 13-time PGA Tour winner went further, arguing that the volume of decisions a player must process at a major makes a one-size-fits-all timing standard almost impossible to police fairly.
'There's so much that goes into golf and there's so much that goes into it hole to hole,' Thomas continued. 'Are you hitting it close? Are you able to tap it in, or do you have to mark every stuff like that? It's very hard to make that call. We just didn't agree with it, to be honest.'
The warning was rescinded by officials shortly after it was issued — a point Thomas seized on as vindication.
'We got taken off, you know, a hole later,' he noted. 'They — we were caught up. So it kind of goes to our point of why we didn't think we should have. But it is what it is.'
The pace-of-play debate at Aronimink follows months of broader tour discussion around shot clocks and stroke penalties for slow play after similar flashpoints earlier in the season. Thomas, who entered the weekend still inside striking distance at a leaderboard the field has called 'bunched', declined to escalate his criticism into a wider policy attack, framing the disagreement as a one-day judgment call rather than a systemic complaint.
His Round 2 effort kept him in major contention, though the timing of the warning — at a championship already defined by punishing scoring conditions and what Scottie Scheffler labelled 'absurd' pin positions — added another layer to a week of grinding golf in suburban Philadelphia.
For Thomas, the clock no longer matters. His protest will sit alongside the rest of the field's grumbling about Aronimink's setup as a flavour of how the year's second major is shaking out.