19 February 2024 , 19:59
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Patrick Cantlay's slow play - previously branded "ridiculous" - came up again at the Genesis Invitational but it didn't help him to win the tournament.
Cantlay was playing in the final group with Xander Schauffele as they topped the leaderboard entering the final round. He was ahead by two strokes when play started on Sunday and was leading by as many as five shots over the weekend.
He and Schauffele were the last to start at Riviera, and they were already one whole hole behind the group before them before they even finished the fifth hole. While Luke List and Will Zalatoris were starting on the seventh hole, Cantlay and Schauffele were still on the fifth fairway.
The gap between the groups got bigger, and Jim Nantz talked about it on the CBS broadcast. "It's early in the round," he said. "There is a noticeable gap between these two [final] pairings. Is there a reason for that?"
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After the tournament finished, a potential reason for the slow play emerged. The Golf Channel said after the last round that Cantlay woke up on Sunday with a fever over 100 degrees, according to his coach Jamie Mulligan.
Patrick Cantlay didn't talk to the reporters because he felt unwell. Two days earlier, Tiger Woods had to stop playing in the tournament because he had the flu.
But it isn't the first time people have talked about Cantlay being slow. Last year, Matt Fitzpatrick said his slow play was "ridiculous" during an event.
Brooks Koepka was also upset last year because he had to wait behind a "brutally slow" group that included Cantlay and Viktor Hovland at the Masters. It took nearly five hours for Koepka and Jon Rahm to finish their round.
Patrick Cantlay fell away over the weekend after a strong start at Rivera (Getty Images)But back then, Cantlay was there to say his piece, explaining that waiting happens to everyone. "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," he explained.
"We waited on the 15th fairway, we waited on the 18th fairway. I imagine it was slow for everyone. 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.
"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."