Jon Rahm Is Right: The Open Can Keep Its Conduct Policy, but Slow Play Is Still Golf's More Annoying Cowardice

Image: The Open / R&A

Jon Rahm is right about the part golf still treats like a minor inconvenience.

The new majors conduct policy can stay. Slow play still deserves a much harder shove.

According to Associated Press reporting published Tuesday, July 14, 2026, Rahm said he supports the majors having a published code of conduct, but questioned the jump from no warning to a penalty in some cases and added that slow play still gets far too much procedural courtesy before anyone actually gets punished.

That is the useful tension.

This column is based on AP’s July 14, 2026 Open-week report, checked on July 15, 2026, plus Birdie Report’s earlier conduct-policy coverage from Shinnecock Hills. No pretending I was standing next to the timing station with a stopwatch and a morality chart.

For the surrounding week first, read our piece on Royal Birkdale’s new setup, the Joe Dean last-chance qualifier story, and our earlier U.S. Open column on why the majors conduct policy worked.

If you want the next Birkdale layer once play starts, go to our opening-day conditions piece and the companion column on why this kind of strategic major setup is good for golf.

The Conduct Policy Is Fine. Golf Needed Actual Teeth

The AP story lays out the recent examples clearly.

Sergio Garcia got a warning at The Masters after smashing and breaking his driver. Joaquin Niemann got a two-shot penalty at the U.S. Open after throwing a wedge at Shinnecock. And the R&A policy explicitly says a player does not need to receive a warning before getting a two-stroke penalty or disqualification if the behavior is severe enough.

Good.

We already made the broader case in our Shinnecock conduct-policy piece: golf has spent too much time excusing toddler behavior from adults with endorsement portfolios. The majors finally have a clean way to attach consequences when a player acts like a jackass.

That part is not the problem.

Rahm’s Warning Point Is Understandable, Not Sacred

AP quoted Rahm saying he gets the policy and does not mind it, but also suggesting that Niemann maybe deserved a warning first, especially when golf’s pace-of-play system usually burns through multiple warnings before a penalty even becomes possible.

I understand the comparison.

I do not fully buy the conclusion.

There is a difference between:

• a player drifting too slow inside a messy field
• and a player launching clubs around a major championship

Those do not need to live on the same enforcement ladder.

If the committee believes an act is serious enough to skip the friendly nudge stage, it should be able to do that. Otherwise the policy becomes decorative all over again, and golf goes right back to its usual cowardly routine where everybody knows something looked terrible but nobody wants to be the adult in the room.

Slow Play Is Still the Bigger Weekly Irritant

This is where Rahm’s point really lands.

Slow play is more common than conduct violations. It affects more players. It affects more groups. It absolutely affects the viewing product.

And golf still handles it like a fragile diplomatic incident.

AP quoted Rahm saying that with pace of play, players get a warning, another warning, and then maybe a penalty. That “maybe” is the whole joke. The sport loves threatening pace-of-play enforcement way more than it loves actually doing it.

That is why the conduct-policy contrast matters.

Golf just proved it can publish a standard, give officials discretion, and accept that punishment might annoy somebody. Great. Now apply even a fraction of that courage to the dead-time plague that drags down regular tournament golf.

The Open Is a Terrible Week to Pretend Pace Is Fine

Royal Birkdale week should be a reminder that pace gets worse when the decisions get heavier.

Firm turf, awkward winds, new hole setups, and major-championship nerves are all real. They also create the exact conditions where players start orbiting a shot for way too long while everybody else pretends they are just being thorough.

That does not mean rush. It means stop tolerating obvious excess.

If the R&A can tell players that serious misconduct may lead straight to a penalty, it can also stop acting like glacial pre-shot routines are some untouchable personality trait.

Golf Only Looks Tough When It Enforces the Right Things

This is the broader point.

Sports always reveal what they actually care about through enforcement, not speeches.

Right now the majors are at least showing they care a little more about obvious public meltdowns. Fine. That is progress.

But ordinary tournament golf still sends a dumber signal on pace:

• we know it is annoying
• we know it hurts the product
• we know players complain about it privately
• and we are still going to act surprised every Sunday when rounds drag

That is weak.

If a conduct policy can protect the spirit of the game, then actual pace penalties can protect the watchability of the damn thing.

Bottom Line

Jon Rahm is right that slow play deserves more real attention than it gets, and AP’s July 14 report did a good job showing the contradiction.

Golf’s new major-championship conduct policy is worth keeping because it finally gives officials some backbone on obvious misconduct.

Now the sport should borrow some of that backbone for pace of play, because the average fan is going to encounter slow golf a lot more often than a player launching a wedge into the dunes.