The European Tour has announced a new pace of play policy in a bid to cut 15 minutes off the time taken to play a round of golf.

Effective from this week's Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, players will be subjected to sustained monitoring as soon as their group is seen to be out of position, the aim being to more easily identify those responsible.

Any player who then exceeds the time allowed for a shot - 50 seconds if first to play and 40 seconds thereafter - will be issued a "monitoring penalty." Two monitoring penalties in a single round will result in a fine of £2,000.

European Tour chief referee John Paramor added: "We will now be with the players, rather than informing them that they are out of position and leaving them to do it (catch up) by themselves. We found that had mixed success.

"We feel we are going to have to stay with the players so we will be able to see every shot played from the moment that we identify that they are out of position. We can see who the problem is and they are the ones who will get these monitoring penalties which can end up being costly."

Chief executive Keith Pelley pledged last November that the European Tour would take the lead in tackling slow play and described Wednesday's announcement as the "first step."

"Our new policy will help identify the slow players and will allow our faster players, who have never had a problem, to feel less pressured by the rules officials," he added.

"We believe this measure will help keep groups in position on the golf course and, in doing that, shave up to 15 minutes per group per round. This will help make golf more appealing and engaging to our fans, both at the course itself or watching on television."

Meanwhile, Pelley is confident golf does not have a problem with the kind of match-fixing which has been alleged to be widespread in tennis.

An investigation carried out by the BBC and Buzzfeed alleges that over the last decade a core group of 16 players have repeatedly been brought to the attention of the sport's governing bodies over suspicions they have fixed matches.

The report claims all of the 16 players have ranked in the world's top 50 at some point and that more than half of them were playing in the Australian Open first round, which started on Monday.

Asked if he was concerned about similar problems in golf, Pelley said: "I would say emphatically not. It's not one we are concerned about."