USGA & R&A announce plans to limit green-reading materials

USGA & R&A announce plans to limit green-reading materials
Kay's Comments on what's important about Putting

Professional golfers have two things that the average golf player does not have at their finger tips - a caddy to line them up and a yardage book with extensive details of each green .  But the average golf has one thing that professional golfers don’t have - a range finder. 

Professional golfers have traditional detailed yardage books that included yardages and all kinds of very detailed information on every angle of each green.  

Now the USGA & R&A announce plans to limit green-reading materials - yardage books with very limited rules on what can be included or really what needs to be excluded.  But who would have every guessed there would be an app that can read a green in seconds? 

Here is a quote in Morning Read from an article by Gary VanSickle (President of the Golf Writers Assn. of America),  “First, this is pretty much a professional-golf rule.  Most recreational golfers don’t play by the letter of the rules, anyway, and they certainly don’t play at courses where detailed green-reading maps are available.  It’s a moot point for us choppers. So, it’s a little odd to make a rule for fewer than 1 percent of the world’s golfers … while continuing to do nothing about 350-yard drives.”  (full article:  http://www.morningread.com/features/37c017be-dc40-4738-9a85-df68fb2a2deeFull)

I agree that most golfers do not exactly play by the letter of the law which is ok - they need to simply get out and play.  But here is my point about green-reading:  There is so much ado about the BREAK on the green.  Do I “plumb-bob” or not?  Or what really is that?  Or do I use aim-point and what is that too?  

If you really get down to it - break has something to do about putting, but putting is 99% about speed or distance.  Yet there is so much talk about the break.  It is important, but the “break” still has to do with speed.  If one hits the mark of a break, but has too much speed, it won’t break at the right point.  And if it has too little speed, then it breaks too soon.

I am not sure if there is an app yet that will tell you how hard or soft to hit it?

Here to my point - Putting technique or how to use a putter to hit the center of the golf ball to the center of the golf club is one of the main principles in controlling distance.  So maybe there is still a need for us golf instructors to keep teaching before the app store takes over.  Job security!  

My next article might be on putting - stay tuned!