At the 2026 Open Championship, golf fans witnessed conflicting realities when it comes to slow play in pro golf. On the one hand, Ryan Fox put on a fast-play clinic on his way to winning on Sunday at Royal Birkdale, which Jon Rahm called “eye-opening.”

On the other, some pros suffered through rounds on Thursday and Friday that stretched to 5 hours and 40 minutes.

Ahead of this week’s LIV Golf U.K. event, Rahm tackled both seemingly contradictory ideas in his pre-tournament press conference. But he also identified the biggest issue with slow play in pro golf and suggested a simple solution.

Rahm says slow play rules need to be ‘stricter’

Rahm presented his idea for controlling pace of play on Tour when addressing a different issue entirely: new code-of-conduct policies at majors.

The two-time major champion was given a code-of-conduct warning at last week’s Open following a club slam during the second round.

“Now that you bring up pace of play, I can give you an idea,” Rahm began. “If you get a warning for code of conduct on Thursday, that warning stays for the whole week and it doesn’t reset. You can be slow on Thursday; your group gets warned; you have time to catch up. Then you get put on the clock, and once you’re on the clock you get one more warning before you get penalized. So you get three possible bad times amongst many others, and then when you tee off on Friday, you start from zero again. That doesn’t seem very fair to me.”

Rahm continued by arguing that pro golf’s governing bodies should either loosen the rules on code of conduct or change the pace of play rules to make warnings last for an entire tournament instead of a single round.

“How come one which is a present issue in the game that can cause slow play and affect other people, you get so many breaks, and it’s completely looked over, and then in code of conduct, you don’t know where the line is. You have no definition of what you can or cannot do, even though we understand where the limit may be, and that warning stays with you for the whole week,” Rahm said on Tuesday. “I know the different things and why they’re doing it, but either make one of them a lot more stricter or the other one a lot looser. Whatever you choose. But it would be nice to see them on the same line. Don’t care.”

But if Rahm were making the decision, he would choose to change the pace of play rules.

“I think make pace of play stricter,” he said.

Why Rahm thinks slow play issue has been ‘blown out of proportion’

While Rahm acknowledged that slow play is an issue in pro golf, he also argued that the problem has been overstated. Why? Because slow rounds are just a reality of tournaments with big fields and difficult setups, especially on Thursdays and Fridays.

“It gets to a point where you can only do so much, but when you have — like last week, for example, a hole like 14 where it’s reachable but the green is really hard to hit as a par-5, very few people are going to hit the green, now your ball is running off the green. It’s a difficult chip. It’s just going to take time. As people hit the fairway, slowly it will delay and delay and delay, and by the end of the day it’s going to be quite a wait. It is the nature of the game,” Rahm explained.

He backed up his argument by noting that tournaments with smaller fields, such as the Masters, don’t typically see issues with slow play.

“I think the pace of play has been blown out of proportion a little bit as of late,” Rahm said. “I think most people only fall back to playing slower simply because the group in front is slow, and you only see a small part of the whole narrative, when the truth is I think when you have a smaller field, it rarely, rarely becomes an issue.”

Rahm praises Ryan Fox and top pros for fast pace of play

As for Fox’s lightning-fast play on Sunday at the Open, Rahm was not surprised, having played with the longtime pro many times. Though he did admit he was shocked at just how quickly Fox hit his winning birdie putt on 18.

“I think what was surprising was taking 22 seconds from the moment the last putt from Sam [Burns] goes in until Ryan hits his putt to win the championship. I think it shows more than just a fast routine, how confident and how good he was feeling that day,” Rahm said.

He also said Fox’s success while playing fast could be “eye-opening” for the golf world and provide players of all types with a good example to follow.

“I’ve played a lot with Ryan [Fox], and obviously I’m not surprised since I know how fast he is, but I think it’s eye-opening to the world when you get to see every single shot he hits that day and how quickly he truly plays.”

But Rahm also noted that while slow players get the most attention, many of the best pros are fast players. He name-checked Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka specifically to demonstrate that Fox’s example was not out of the ordinary.

“Another player that’s incredibly fast is Rory McIlroy. Always has been. Brooks [Koepka] as well. There’s a lot of people that have won great events that are super fast. It’s just never been talked about because I think it’s easier to focus on the other side of the coin, right,” Rahm argued. “But there’s a lot of people out there that have achieved a lot being really fast.”

While Rahm spoke at length about pace of play in his Tuesday LIV press conference, he stayed tight-lipped about LIV Golf’s tenuous future. When asked if he expected to be playing on LIV Golf in 2027, he said simply, “I’m not going to share anything that I can’t share with you guys right now.”

The 2026 men’s major championship season ended on Sunday when Ryan Fox capped off a miraculous weekend at Royal Birkdale by rolling in a 10-foot putt on the 72nd hole to claim the Open Championship.

As Fox raised his arms in triumph, the four-month sprint that is the most important in pro golf came to a close with Rory McIlroy, Aaron Rai, Wyndham Clark and Fox securing the four wins that defined the season.

But there were many other winners (and losers) from the 2026 major championship season. Let’s start with the obvious.

WINNER: Rory’s second historic Masters win

Everyone wondered how Rory McIlroy would play at Augusta National with the monkey off his back. Well, he roared out to a six-shot lead, blew it in a handful of holes on Saturday and then rallied to become just the fourth player in history to win back-to-back green jackets, joining Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Nick Faldo. The win also gave Rory six majors, tying him with Phil Mickelson, Faldo and Lee Trevino.

McIlroy faced the same questions he faced after his 2025 Masters win about how he would respond while living in the emerald glow of another Augusta triumph. This time around was much better. McIlroy played less but contended at the PGA and could’ve won had his driver not been erratic. He sent a Saturday shockwave through Shinnecock at the U.S. Open, getting into a tie for second before fading over the final 27 holes.

After a long decade of no major success, McIlroy has now won back-to-back Masters and has a legitimate shot of getting to eight, nine or 10 majors if he stays healthy.

LOSER: Scottie Scheffler’s near-misses had similar themes

One year after winning two majors, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler went winless in the four tournaments that matter most.

A bad Friday at the Masters led to him finishing one shot behind McIlroy. He came up short in his first chance at the career Grand Slam at Shinnecock and was doomed by a cold putter at Birkdale. I thought he was in line to win at Aronimink after two rounds. No one was hitting the ball better, and Scheffler seemed to understand the way to attack the diabolical greens that mystified most of the field. But he went quietly over the weekend in Philadelphia and now will have to wait nine months to get another crack at major No. 5.

Scheffler gave himself legitimate chances to win three of the four majors and left empty-handed because either a bad round, a troublesome part of his game or an opponent in full flight kept him from the trophy.

“I mean, today was a great effort,” Scheffler said after his final round at the Open, where he finished T4. “I felt like I was doing the right things out there. I gave myself a lot of looks again today. It was just — I guess it just wasn’t my week.”

“It was a battle all week,” Scheffler said on Sunday at the U.S. Open. “The golf course was challenging. I felt like I did some good things. I felt like there are some things that I could have improved on. I felt close again. It’s just, like, little things, little things here and there. Today I felt like I did enough to have a really good round. It was just, man, I felt like I hit a lot of good putts that were really close to going in. Just wasn’t able to kind of hole those. … But overall I felt like I gave myself a decent amount of looks today. Yeah, just a few shots. That’s really all it came down to.”

Going 2-T14-T4-T4 in the four majors would be a success for most people. But for Scheffler, who is still far and away the best player in the world, his major season is defined through a binary lens: win or lose.

WINNER: Wyndham Clark‘s narrative-changing week at Shinnecock

Wyndham Clark was already a major champion, but you wouldn’t have known it by the conversation surrounding him the past year. Clark, who won the 2023 U.S. Open at LACC, became defined by ugly incidents at Oakmont and Quail Hollow last season instead of his major win. He had been playing bad golf, and even his LACC victory had been chalked up to a lightning-in-a-bottle week where Rory McIlroy failed to overtake him.

But one major is different than two, and winning wire-to-wire at Shinnecock makes the two look even shinier. Clark took advantage of an advantageous draw to jump out to a big lead and then spent the weekend fending off Sam Burns and Scheffler while silencing a Long Island crowd that battered him with verbal abuse. When the week ended, Clark had become a two-time U.S. Open champion, matching the major totals of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas.

History is littered with one-off major winners. Winning a second puts you in a different class, whether people want to admit it or not.

LOSER: Bryson’s season to forget

After two years of putting himself in near-constant contention at major championships, Bryson DeChambeau spent most of his major weekends at home. He ejected on the 18th on Friday at Augusta National, never had a chance at Aronimink and let go of the wheel on Friday at Shinnecock to miss his first three major cuts. At the Open, he vaulted into contention before being hit with a two-shot penalty for unintentionally improving his swing during his second round. He then threatened to withdraw from the tournament before deciding to continue. He ultimately limped to a T14 finish.

DeChambeau, golf’s media superstar, did all this while freezing out the media after every round except his first at the Masters. With LIV Golf’s future and DeChambeau’s uncertain as we head toward 2027, it wasn’t a major campaign that inspired confidence in where his focus lies. His YouTube views will continue to tick up, but a non-competitive year at majors won’t do much for his professional legacy.

WINNER: Sam Burns’ major leap

Prior to the 2025 U.S. Open, Sam Burns had just one career top-10 finish at a major. He was a good PGA Tour player who had been relatively non-existent at the four tournaments that shape everything around pro golf.

But then he was the 54-hole leader at Oakmont, and, although he didn’t get it over the line, that seemed to unlock something. He played in the final group on Saturday at the Masters and finished T7. He then barely missed a putt to tie Clark on Sunday at Shinnecock to finish runner-up. He led the Open Championship through 54 holes but lost control of the tournament on the front nine and couldn’t make enough putts down the stretch to match Fox, eventually finishing third. That’s four top-10 finishes in the last six majors, and while he didn’t win, everything points to Sam Burns breaking through soon.

“I’ve played a lot of golf with Sam,” Ryan Fox said after his Open win. “His day is coming.”

LOSER: Jon Rahm’s lost year

After finishing T46 at the Open, Jon Rahm has now competed in 11 majors since his shocking move to LIV Golf after the 2023 season. His results in those 11 are as follows: T45-CUT-T7-T14-T8-T7-T34-T2-CUT-T46. Of those four top 10s, only two — the 2025 and 2026 PGA Championships — saw Rahm really threaten to win on the weekend. He made a furious run to catch Scottie Scheffler on Sunday at Quail Hollow only to falter on the final three holes. Then, he watched as Aaron Rai roared past him at Aronimink this year to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy.

Rahm continues to dominate the competition on LIV. Any metric will tell you he’s still a top-five player in the world, but his play at the majors has been below his elite standard for the last three years. This major season represents another lost year for Rahm as he remains stuck on two career majors.

WINNER: Good guy, dark horse winners

Aaron Rai shocked everyone at Aronimink when he survived a chaotic Sunday to be the last man standing on a leaderboard that included Rahm, McIlroy, Thomas, Schauffele and Ludvig Aberg. As Rai celebrated a career-defining achievement, his peers gushed about his work ethic and character.

“You won’t find one person on property who won’t be happy for him,” McIlroy said.

Two months later, 39-year-old Ryan Fox, known for his quick pace of play and easy-going personality, went on a blistering weekend charge to win the Open, giving Royal Birkdale a good-guy champion, one who took up the game in high school and has grinded his way up through various world tours and was content with the winding path his career had taken. Everything looks different after Sunday at Birkdale.

“When I turned pro, I think the goal was just to get on a major tour, to be honest,” Fox said on Sunday night. “I think I said to my team last night, you know, at dinner, if you’d have given me my career up till yesterday when I turned pro, I’d have jumped at that. I don’t know what to think now, to be honest. … To be sitting in front of you guys now as the Champion Golfer of the Year is a bit crazy. As I said earlier, it’s surreal. I don’t have the vocabulary to explain it.”

The 2020s have seen the big names dominate the majors, with the likes of Rory, Scottie, Bryson, Rahm, JT, Collin and Xander gobbling most of them up. But 2026 was a reminder that the underdog can still etch their names into history.

LOSER: Two different searches continue

Jordan Spieth sat next to the Aronimink clubhouse outside Philadelphia and told me that he entered that week feeling like it was his best chance to win a major since he won the 2017 Open. He finished in a tie for 18th. After being a non-factor at the U.S. Open and bombing out in his return to Royal Birkdale, Spieth has now gone nine years since his last major win. While he continues to say he’s close — that his game is the best it has been since he hoisted the Claret Jug — all we’re left with are memories of the Jordan Spieth of old and hope that 2027 brings something different.

As for Tommy Fleetwood, his quest to get off the “Best Players Not To Win A Major” list was unsuccessful in 2026. He had a chance over the weekend at his home Open, but three straight bogeys on Sunday spelled the end of his title chances. Nonetheless, Fleetwood got a dream ending at Royal Birkdale, just not the one he’d envisioned. Perhaps that will come next year.

WINNER: Guys who punched their ticket for 2027

While everyone at majors is playing for history, on Sunday, a different goal emerges for players who are not staples at major championships.

At the Masters, the top 12 get invites back the next year. Max Homa’s T9 and Jake Knapp’s T11 mean they’ll return to Augusta in 2027. J.T. Poston (T4), Keith Mitchell (T4), Sam Stevens (T7) and Joaquin Niemann (T7) all earned their way to the U.S. Open in 2027 with top 10s at Shinnecock. Lucas Herbert (T6) and Casey Jarvis (T6) have 2027 Open tickets booked thanks to top 10s at Birkdale.

LOSER: The Old Guard looking for one more

Last year, we saw Justin Rose and Adam Scott come up short in their latest attempts to break out of the one-major club. Rose was bested by McIlroy in a playoff at the Masters, and a tough Sunday doomed Scott’s chances at the U.S. Open.

There was hope that 2026 would bring more chances and, perhaps, success for one or both of Rose and Scott. Rose had a chance again at Augusta. He had the lead with eight holes to go but stumbled down the stretch as McIlroy claimed his second consecutive green jacket. He went T10-T11-CUT in the final three majors. Scott, on the other hand, didn’t find himself truly in the mix at any of the four majors. He played in his 100th consecutive major at the U.S. Open, but that milestone was all he collected in 2026, leaving Scott with conflicting emotions as he tries to win another major before the sun sets.

“I don’t know if it matters now going forward or not,” Scott said of his streak after a backdoor T9 at the Open. “I’d love to be playing in them obviously. I don’t take that for granted, but I’d love to win one more.”

We’ll have to wait nine months to see if that happens.

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