AUGUSTA, Ga. – Expect the pace of play at the Masters to speed up – including at the Drive, Chip and Putt. 

Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley became the latest person to speak out against slow play at the professional level and said that next year’s Drive, Chip & Putt, a competition held on the Sunday before the Masters for boys and girls age 7-15, likely will implement a time limitation to rectify slow play.

“Playing without undue delay, as the rules and the game’s traditions dictate, is an essential skill of golf at all levels. Recognizing the challenges professionals face each week, I also believe pace of play is an important element of the examination of the world’s best players,” Ridley said on Wednesday during his opening remarks of his annual Chairman’s press conference ahead of the 89th Masters. “Golf is a special game because it requires us to be considerate while also being competitive. Respecting other people’s time, including, importantly, the fans who support the game, is a fundamental courtesy. Therefore, I want to encourage continued dialogue on this topic, especially at the professional levels which serve as the most visible representation of our sport.”

This follows a growing trend among golf’s professional tours to implement stiffer penalties against slow play. The LPGA Tour and PGA Tour both conceded they have a problem with pace of play and have introduced new policies designed to crack down on dawdlers with larger fines, and the PGA Tour has discussed the possibility of publishing who the slow players are at each event for the first time. Next week, the Korn Ferry Tour’s Lecom Suncoast Classic will be the first tournament to experiment with removing what has essentially been a warning for a “bad time” and will now apply a one-stroke penalty for a “first offense.”

“I think maybe this might be a call to action that perhaps we haven’t seen in the past,” Ridley later said. “I’ve spoken about it a number of times. We will be dealing with that issue this week. I’m not going to tell you that I’m going to be happy with the results, but I think I am encouraged that the PGA Tour is doing some things, experimenting with some timing procedures that might be a little bit more aggressive than we’ve seen in the past.”

AimPoint slows down Masters players

One member of the media asked Ridley about his reaction to participants in the Drive, Chip and Putt who used the AimPoint system, a technique using one’s feet to determine a numerical value for the slope of the green, to read the break of the putt. Several participants were taking approximately two minutes to line up putts on the 18th green of the famed course.

“I think that example really illustrates the problem, and unfortunately, these young people are looking to their heroes who play the game each week for a living as to how they’re going to approach competitively playing the game,” Ridley said. “As it relates to the Drive, Chip & Putt, I too noticed exactly what you noticed. It’s interesting, but every phase of the competition has the same length chip and the same length putt, so it’s really not necessary to pace that off. They know how many yards that is. But nevertheless, that’s what they were doing.

“I think it’s safe to assume that next year at the Drive, Chip & Putt, you will see some sort of time limitations placed on the competition.”

Could that mean a shot clock? Ridley didn’t specify. Only time will tell.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Augusta National’s Fred Ridley talked about possible shot clock