FORT WORTH, Texas – Last week’s PGA Championship was the final event in a five-week, seven-tournament test period that allowed players to use distance-measuring devices during competition rounds in an attempt to address pace of play on the PGA Tour, and the results from the experiment were mixed.
“Honestly, not really,” Rickie Fowler said when asked if rangefinders helped pace of play. “In certain situations if you were off-line, it makes it a little easier. Certain circumstances it helps speed up that shot, but the last few weeks I’d stepped off my number, [caddie Rick Romano] would shoot it, so our process didn’t change.
“I can see [the decision to continue the use of distance-measuring devices] going either way. Everyone at home, using a distance-measuring device, its part of their normal routine. But the history and tradition of the game, where you step off the numbers. I don’t have a specific opinion which way it should go.”
The test period began at last month’s RBC Heritage, and even though the PGA Championship wasn’t officially part of the experiment, the PGA of America has allowed the use of distance-measuring devices (DMDs) in its championships since 2019. Although the Tour is still sorting through the data and there are no clear conclusions, most involved in the test period agree on at least one thing – they didn’t hurt pace of play.
“I don’t know that we can definitively say that it improves pace of play and I think that’s why we felt it was really important to stop allowing them to use them; we called it a test period for a reason,” said Gary Young, the Tour’s senior vice president of rules and competition. “They’ve had this shiny new toy for awhile; if we take it away from them we are more likely to get feedback. Like, hey, we really felt like that helped us and in which way did it help.”
The Tour planned to send players and caddies a survey following the test period, and the Player Advisory Council is set to review the data and the general response from the members at a previously scheduled meeting next week at the Memorial.
Young spent much of the early week at Colonial Country Club talking to players and caddies about distance-measuring devices and he said he received a “mixed bag” of responses.
“A lot of them feel like it’s what separates the really good caddies from the so-so caddies out here, the ability to calculate those angles properly,” Young said. “And then you had the other side who said, if this is about speeding up play then we should be using them.”
Young said opinions on the use of DMDs varied generationally, with veterans generally not supportive of a rule change that would permanently allow them compared to relatively younger players who have been conditioned to use rangefinders during tournament rounds.
“Personally, I don’t like it, I like pacing my yardages and a little more old school, but I understand why we are trying to do it, trying to shave a couple of minutes off a round,” Camilo Villegas said this week at the Charles Schwab Challenge. “But at the same time if we shave two or three minutes is that our goal? I don’t know. I’d like to get back and analyze the data and look at the numbers. See what happened.”
Most agree the two areas DMDs helped were on wildly off-line shots where there were few reference points, and for shorter shots which normally require either the player or caddie to pace off the distance.
Young said officials plan to look at individual player speed-of-play averages during the test period and DMD usage, whether it was just used either by a player, caddie or both.
What remains to be seen is whether DMDs had a significant impact on pace, which has become a priority for the Tour following feedback from fans. Many players and caddies doubt DMDs will make a significant difference and some worry a permanent policy change could even hurt pace of play.
“We definitely saw that it was an extra step in the process rather than reducing the steps,” Young said. “I would say the ones who are not in favor of it think that this did nothing more than add an extra step.”
Anecdotally, Young said there was an incident on the Korn Ferry Tour – which held a similar test period with DMDs as well as a dramatic change to the secondary circuit’s timing policy – where a player received a “bad time” because they were using a distance-measuring device.
“The player’s group was being timed and it was because he went back to shoot the distance [with a rangefinder] a second time that caused him to go over his time,” Young explained. “That would be a negative to having them. However, some would say that while their group was being timed, DMDs helped process that information quicker.”
While the membership is split on whether DMDs could actually help pace of play, the consensus among players is the change to the timing policy on the Korn Ferry Tour will have a greater impact. The new policy allows for a one-stroke penalty for the first “bad time.” The previous policy assessed a one-shot penalty for the second “bad time.” A player receives a “bad time” when they exceed the allotted time to play a shot, which varies depending on where the shot is played and the order of play.
“[The Korn Ferry Tour] has definitely seen both an improvement to their pace of play and they’ve seen less timings taking place,” Young said. “It was really important that we stop the DMD usage and continue with the pace-of-play policy change to determine which one was having the bigger effect.”
Pace of play on Tour – which has always been slow, at best – further became a talking point earlier this season at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am when Golf Channel’s Frank Nobilo called out Tom Kim during the final-round broadcast. After Kim took more than a minute to hit his approach shot into the par-5 sixth hole, Nobilo said, “It was not worth the wait.”
The pushback from the media and public appeared to resonate with the players, as well as the looming threat of more sweeping pace-of-play changes.
“We have seen our pace of play improve across the board ever since this came to a head at Pebble Beach. I would say, pretty much, we have been playing faster,” Young said. “Now, why is that? Some of it is just a little more awareness from the players that something else could be coming down the line that they don’t want. I’m sure they heard all the talk about things like a shot clock and I think their opinion is that doesn’t belong in our sport.”
Whether distance-measuring devices or even more impactful changes belong on the PGA Tour remains to be seen, but the DMD test period did prove that change is coming.
