USGA Still Studying DMD's, At Least For Another Week

Ryan Herrington reports that the USGA still isn't quite ready to go a policy of allowing distance measuring devices in their amateur events, but with the USGA Annual Meeting next week the possibility of a decision seems somewhat likely.

The R&A will be allowing the use of the devices in their amateur events, it was announced Monday.

SI's Gary Van Sickle, who has long believed rangefinders will speed up play, says enough already:

Here’s a message for the USGA, which has not responded to the R&A’s surprising announcement: While we’re young!

It’s ironic that while the USGA made pace-of-play awareness a priority last year, it has heavy-handedly slow-played DMDs even though they speed up play. It’s doubly ironic that the R&A made the first move on rangefinders because R&A head Peter Dawson and friends were the raging traditionalists who were so dead set against rangefinders, according to my sources in the DMD industry. The biggest objection by traditionalists has been that they don’t like the look of a player peering through a measuring device to get a yardage.

Well, and that they don't speed up play as much as, say, slower greens would. Nor is it particulary flattering to watch college golfers walk off a yardage AND shoot it with the rangefinder too. Oh, and they look silly and it's one more thing to buy in an already expensive game.