As well as Rory McIlroy’s victory at The Masters, one of the big talking points heading into the RBC Heritage was the decision to permit distance measuring devices as the PGA Tour looks to address concerns about pace of play.
The PGA Tour has come in for a lot of criticism in recent months, with some of their events – particularly in the early stages of the year – seemingly taking an age to complete. Fans were furious at The American Express over how long the final round lasted.
To the PGA Tour’s credit, they have made a commitment to try and address the problems surrounding slow play. And one of the changes they are seemingly considering is allowing players and caddies to use rangefinders during tournaments.
They have been allowed at the PGA Championship in recent years. And the RBC Heritage marked the first time that they were permitted as part of the tour’s current attempts to speed up play.
What Todd Lewis noticed at the RBC Heritage with rangefinders allowed
But perhaps no long-term decisions are likely to be made off the back of the visit to Harbour Town.
Speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Todd Lewis admitted that he cannot remember seeing anyone at the event taking advantage of the opportunity to double check their distances.
“I don’t really think it was a big factor at all, I didn’t see – I watched a lot of golf – I didn’t see actually any players or caddies pulling out a rangefinder, distance measuring device to use on this golf course,” he said.
“But this probably isn’t the best test for distance measuring devices, because it’s a tight corridor golf course, you really aren’t going to get off the grid that much. I’m looking at what happens at other events like the Truist Championship – that’s a new golf course that they really don’t play in Philly Cricket Club.
“It’s bigger, you can hit it in other fairways pretty easily. So I’m interested to see how it works there, but I don’t really think there’s a lot of data that was gathered here at this tournament. But this weekend and what happens at Puntacana, these are two of six tournaments they’re going to test so we’ll see what happens.”
The PGA Tour were given a warning with Scottie Scheffler’s comments on pace of play at Harbour Town
There were warnings that players were not planning to make any changes to how they approach their shots this past week. Scottie Scheffler suggested that he would let Ted Scott decide whether to use a measuring device ahead of the tournament.
Meanwhile, Scheffler also insisted that it was unlikely to make a notable change to how long it takes to get around the golf course. And as Lewis suggests, the RBC Heritage was perhaps not a tournament which needed help speeding up play.
Any signature event boasts a much smaller field with two-ball pairings. So there tends to be a better pace to the events anyway.
It probably does no harm to allow rangefinders permanently. But clearly, Scheffler’s suggestion that they are unlikely to make a huge difference to the pace of play is looking spot on at this very early stage.
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