At the last press conference The Players Championship, PGA Tour Commissioner, Jay Monahan, announced a test decision: allowing the use of Rangefinder in the upcoming six tournaments. This is a bold step to improve the speed of competition, a controversial issue in the professional golf village for many years.
According to the current golf law, the distance meter is allowed to be used, but the PGA Tour has applied a local regulations to ban this device. Meanwhile, LPGA Tour has allowed widely use, and PGA of America has also applied it at PGA Championship since 2021. This difference has raised many debates about whether PGA Tour should continue to maintain a ban.
The test time will start right after The Masters at RBC Heritage and end before the PGA Championship at Truist Championship and OneFlight Myrtle Beach Classic. In the six selected tournaments, there are two events limiting the number of golfers (Signature Events), a team tournament at Zurich Championship, a full 156 -tournament at Byron Nelson and two 132 -person events of the replacement group. This diversified selection is to collect comprehensive data to evaluate the actual effectiveness of the distance meter for the speed of competition.
This is not the first time PGA Tour tests this initiative. Earlier, Korn Ferry Tour also implemented, but the results were not as clear as expected.
Gary Young, senior vice president of the law & competition of PGA Tour, said: “We did not obtain a clear positive result, but there was no negative impact. However, the distance gauges are useful in the shots out of the Fairway. When we discuss more carefully, we realize that with less golfers, its effect may be more pronounced, because keeping up with the ahead group is often a challenge when playing in pairs. ”
Therefore, this test decision is aimed at tournaments with different structure to have a more overall view.
A team of competition speed, including golf Adam Schenk, Sam Burns and Jhonattan Vegas, along with PGA tour officials, proposed this idea. The plan has received absolute consensus from the PGA Tour Board as well as the Player Advisory Council in the recent meeting.
Both Monahan and Young emphasized that no change may take place without the support from the golfers themselves. Testing the distance gauge, publicity of the game speed, as well as applying more strict punishments for slow golfers on the Korry Tour, all need the consensus of the player.
Young calls this golfers “self -control of their own product quality”, and Monahan affirmed:“We listen to fans and act accordingly. Golfers are showing real commitments to improve competition speed. And this is just the beginning. ”
