Distance aids

[Dan King]

I've been away from playing golf for a few years. I did play a bit of golf at this year's King's Putter. I was shocked by how many people now use distance aids.

I was curious why etiquette hasn't developed along with the use of distance aids? I do not want to know exact yardage. I want to test my ability to judge distance and conditions as well as shot making. Yet, people were constantly shouting out yardage.

Is it my responsibility to make it clear I would rather not know, or their responsibility to stop shouting out yardage? Do people who use distance aids ever consider other golfers who would rather not know?

Cheers,
Dan King

If I didn't know my distance to a yard, I couldn't break 80 on any golf course.
  --Lee Trevino

[Adam Clayman]

Dan, Smile, say thank you and ignore it. Unless you are playing a flat windless golf course, the actual yardage is only a place to start calculations/negotiations.

[Pete_Pittock]

Sorry. If you had asked I'd have demurred.

[Brent Hutto]

Dan,

The first time say "I'd rather not hear my yardages". I've never seen anyone fail to comply with such a request. I play with lots of guys who don't want to know, they just say so once and that's that.

[Dan King]

I didn't ask Pete. As my game was in such bad shape, it wouldn't have matters if I knew or not that weekend. But I can imagine if I was trying to play golf it would become irritating. It looks like I have my answer, it is my place to ask them to not shout-out yardage.

I think you are right Adam and Brian, I'm going to have to adjust to this new way of golf, not the other way around.

Cheers,
Dan King

I see the distorted swings, the hurried rounds, and now the electric carts tae ruin the courses and rob us of our exercise. I don't think evolution is goin' ahead so much as just goin' along breedin' more  unfitness every day.
 --Julian Lang

[Brent Hutto]

So maybe I answered the wrong question. Do you want people to not tell you *your* yardages? I've never met anyone who has a problem complying with that.

Or do you not want anyone to discuss their *own* yardages while you're within earshot? That one you'll just have to learn to live with unless you can arrange to play only with like-minded individuals.

[Colin Macqueen]

Dan,
In my experience, here in Oz, the guys with the distance aid keeps the info. to himself unless actually asked. The Aussies are innately competitive!

Just for the fun of it I used to ask the user for the number after I had made my own judgement on the distance. I don't bother much now as I was invariably within plus or minus 10 metres. This range lies well and truly within the  variance of my distance control never mind the wind etc.!

Cheers Colin

[Greg Taylor]

If I'm pulling my laser out anyway, or on the tee I'll call out the yardage... simply because I know I'm going to get asked.

I consider myself fortunate to own one (they are not common place in the UK) so it feels wrong not to spread the love.

Also, why would you rather not know. Would you rather there is no yardages quoted at all on tees and scorecards?!

All sounds a bit like "records are better than CDs, I love the crackling and scratches - they add character"... erm, OK.

[Colin Macqueen]

Greg T,

"…or on the tee I'll call out the yardage... simply because I know I'm going to get asked."

Not in my world in Oz your not….ye'll be "utterly cryit doon"!

And it is exactly because there are yardages on tees, sprinkler heads and scorecards that we don't need the pulling out and the putting away and general tomfoolery associated with range-finders. You still have to hit the shot!

I'm laughing here Greg because in my hey day, back in the early sixties, I argued vehemently with a couple of mates that mono was better than stereo! Yes I have been "utterly cryit doon" ever since …rightly so!
But actually it is still argued that top notch vinyl gives superior listening compared to digital is it not?

Cheers Colin

[Brent Hutto]

Any proposition you can possibly imagine is being argued somewhere on the Internet at this very moment.

[Sean_A]

Dan

Its a losing battle.  Any advantage gained by being better at reading the visual clues is completely nullified by the yardage guns.  Its part and parcel of the McDonalds world we live in. 

Ciao

[Patrick_Mucci]

Dan

Its a losing battle.  Any advantage gained by being better at reading the visual clues is completely nullified by the yardage guns.  Its part and parcel of the McDonalds world we live in. 


Sean, you're correct, but I still like guessing the yardage and am trying to teach my son that the linear yardage between his ball and the flagstick isn't the sole criteria to factor into club selection.

I think golfers who focus on yardage alone often suffer the consequences as course management is about far more than linear distance.

[David_Elvins]

Any proposition you can possibly imagine is being argued somewhere on the Internet at this very moment.

I think that all players should be forced to be told the yardage as part of the rules of golf.  One of the most difficult shots in golf is the shot that measures 170 yards but looks 150 yards.  It is a severe mental chllenge that has been faced by players since the first caddies hit the links in the 1700s.  To take this mental challenge out of the game allows players to swing with conviction and the game is lesser for it. 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Any proposition you can possibly imagine is being argued somewhere on the Internet at this very moment.

I think that all players should be forced to be told the yardage as part of the rules of golf.  One of the most difficult shots in golf is the shot that measures 170 yards but looks 150 yards.  It is a severe mental chllenge that has been faced by players since the first caddies hit the links in the 1700s.  To take this mental challenge out of the game allows players to swing with conviction and the game is lesser for it. 

David, that's why the wind is such a key element in great golf.

As precision becomes almost absolute, it'll be like instrument flying, in that the visuals can be mostly ignored.

I'd prefer that ALL distance aids be eliminated

[Bill_McBride]

I've been away from playing golf for a few years. I did play a bit of golf at this year's King's Putter. I was shocked by how many people now use distance aids.

I was curious why etiquette hasn't developed along with the use of distance aids? I do not want to know exact yardage. I want to test my ability to judge distance and conditions as well as shot making. Yet, people were constantly shouting out yardage.

Is it my responsibility to make it clear I would rather not know, or their responsibility to stop shouting out yardage? Do people who use distance aids ever consider other golfers who would rather not know?

Cheers,
Dan King

If I didn't know my distance to a yard, I couldn't break 80 on any golf course.
  --Lee Trevino

I think it's now on you, Dan - unfortunately.  I have to tell every caddy on the first tee that I do not want them to give me numbers - otherwise, they'll blurt out "155" as we stand 5 yards behind the 150 plate.  Ugh.

David, what would you prefer the caddy tell you if the distance to the target is of interest?

[RJ_Daley]

A couple of my regular playing pals use these damn yardage devices constantly on our home course.  It seems more and more of them are using the lazar guns shooting to the prisms in the pins to get yardage to the pin.  But a few still have those that you download courses to tell you the front middle and rear of green via your GPS in the hole corridor.

 I have great fun teasing them.  They will be standing there a yard into the rough or whatever, 5-6 yards off of the 150 or 100 or 200 plate, and now rotely get their little device out and I wait until they have the device yardage, and just before they authoritatively are going to announce something like "144 to the pin", or front or middle, etc.  I'll blurt out before they speak; "its 148 to the middle", or something nearly correct.  They'll smuggly correct me by saying, 'my XYZ lazer superduper says it is 144.  So, I'll say; "well then you better hit your 150 club and take something a little off it, or get after a hard 7iron you've been pushing all day"...  Then, I stand back and can just see them having a brain fart- pondering the cognitive dissonance.  

And, I'll often blurt out the exact yardage their little machine says, or within a yard or two and tell them;  'jeez, we play this f'ing course a 100 times a year, don't you know that yardage yet'.  It is like telling them the new toy they got for Christmas is last year's 'old obsolete model'...    

[Ally Mcintosh]

OK,

An old subject but one on which I take the Melvyn hard-line traditional approach.

I’d get rid of all distance aids. But if someone wanted to give me an argument to leave in 150 yard markers with nothing else, I’d happily accept that as a compromise.

There’s another thread going which says we have to adapt to change or we will die. But I don’t think change is good for the sake of it. Change has to add more than it takes away and in the case of distance aids, I don’t believe it does…. What distance aids do is add further clutter to the plethora of information already being processed by our brain on the golf course…. And they take away the essence of shot-making and feel by reducing it more to a mechanical approach… They complicate, not simplify…

Anyone who plays regular links golf (and I mean regular, not a trip a year) knows how irrelevant distance aids are to the shot you eventually play. I will admit that target inland courses have more of an argument for distances being known but that’s the cart before the horse in my opinion.

Also, we are quick to forget that yardage markers are a comparatively new invention. I grew up without them and a lot of you have quite a few years on me. How quickly we adapted to mimicking the pros in everything we do.

BUT… back to Dan’s original point. Just ask them to stop…. I had to do that just the other day….

[Scott Warren]

Ally,

We all grew up with distance aids - the poplar on the left is a full wedge in calm conditions, where the dam starts is a full 5 iron to the centre of the green, the ridge across the fairway is a 3 iron to the centre of the green.

And of course on 3-6 holes a round, we always had a reliable number to work from.

I also disagree that range finders are "useless" on links. Knowing how far to the front, back, middle of the green or to the pin or a carry bunker is tremendously useful - before you then consider wind, elevation change, bounce and run. It might be less useful than on a still, damp golf course, but there is value.

What I do know is that it is far easier and, crucially, faster for me to quickly ping a laser off a flagstick or bunker face than it was to march off the distance from a 150 marker or spinkler head back in the day.

[Thomas Dai]

One of the great losses to the game over the past few years has been the loss of that subtle architects tool - 'dead ground'.

Except when unusual weather conditions intervene to the extent that exact yardages can't be easily established, dead ground has now largely been made irrelevant with rangefinders and satellite based gizmo's. A great shame, especially in relation to yee olde courses.

All the best

PS - There's a story about Bernhard Langer where he is given a distance from a sprinkler head and is suposed to have replied "is that from the front or the back of the sprinkler head?".

[Sean_A]

OK,

An old subject but one on which I take the Melvyn hard-line traditional approach.

I’d get rid of all distance aids. But if someone wanted to give me an argument to leave in 150 yard markers with nothing else, I’d happily accept that as a compromise.

There’s another thread going which says we have to adapt to change or we will die. But I don’t think change is good for the sake of it. Change has to add more than it takes away and in the case of distance aids, I don’t believe it does…. What distance aids do is add further clutter to the plethora of information already being processed by our brain on the golf course…. And they take away the essence of shot-making and feel by reducing it more to a mechanical approach… They complicate, not simplify…

Anyone who plays regular links golf (and I mean regular, not a trip a year) knows how irrelevant distance aids are to the shot you eventually play. I will admit that target inland courses have more of an argument for distances being known but that’s the cart before the horse in my opinion.

Also, we are quick to forget that yardage markers are a comparatively new invention. I grew up without them and a lot of you have quite a few years on me. How quickly we adapted to mimicking the pros in everything we do.

BUT… back to Dan’s original point. Just ask them to stop…. I had to do that just the other day….

Ally, yes, 150 or even 100, 150 & 200 markers is a fair compromise - much like it was 10 years ago.  While I don't necessarily agree that yardage complicates matters, I do have two issues with lasers.  First, archies have a hard enough time as it designing interesting courses.  Eliminating the visual tricks makes their job even more difficult and lord knows too many of them can't cope with it!  Second, golf is slowly becoming less and less about the actual striking of the ball.  So much paraphernalia exists between the golfer and the shot that its becoming a bit of a joke.  What guy on this site doesn't admire a photo of two chaps walking down the fairway with bags over their shoulders?  Why - because it evokes an image of a time when golf was more simple.

Ciao  

[jeffwarne]

I've been away from playing golf for a few years. I did play a bit of golf at this year's King's Putter. I was shocked by how many people now use distance aids.

I was curious why etiquette hasn't developed along with the use of distance aids? I do not want to know exact yardage. I want to test my ability to judge distance and conditions as well as shot making. Yet, people were constantly shouting out yardage.

Is it my responsibility to make it clear I would rather not know, or their responsibility to stop shouting out yardage? Do people who use distance aids ever consider other golfers who would rather not know?

Cheers,
Dan King

If I didn't know my distance to a yard, I couldn't break 80 on any golf course.
  --Lee Trevino

I think it's now on you, Dan - unfortunately.  I have to tell every caddy on the first tee that I do not want them to give me numbers - otherwise, they'll blurt out "155" as we stand 5 yards behind the 150 plate.  Ugh.

Unless they blurt out 235 cause they're shooting trees behind   
That's what really cracks me up is people who blindly accept what a machine tells them (right or wrong) on a course they've played 1000 times

[Ricardo Ramirez Calvo]

Alternatively, you can move to Argentina where distance aids are still prohibited in almost all clubs (we are a bit old fashioned down here). I agree with Ally that distance markers are of little help in links courses. In one of my home courses (a links-like course), distance markers were put only about 10 years ago and we still play very much based on guesses and what we "feel" is the right club. But I'm afraid that it's just a matter of time and we will have to live with gadgets on the golf course.

[Brad Isaacs]

One of the great losses to the game over the past few years has been the loss of that subtle architects tool - 'dead ground'.

Except when unusual weather conditions intervene to the extent that exact yardages can't be easily established, dead ground has now largely been made irrelevant with rangefinders and satellite based gizmo's. A great shame, especially in relation to yee olde courses.

All the best

PS - There's a story about Bernhard Langer where he is given a distance from a sprinkler head and is suposed to have replied "is that from the front or the back of the sprinkler head?".

The way I heard it was "to the front or back of the cup"

[Patrick_Mucci]

One of the great losses to the game over the past few years has been the loss of that subtle architects tool - 'dead ground'.

Except when unusual weather conditions intervene to the extent that exact yardages can't be easily established, dead ground has now largely been made irrelevant with rangefinders and satellite based gizmo's. A great shame, especially in relation to yee olde

Thomas,

I'd agree, visual deception has been thwarted by the advent of distance devices, and it's unfortunate.

Ken Bakst continues to wage the war against distance devices at Friars Head, and I applaud his efforts.

[Brent Hutto]

If knowing how far from the hole really detracts that much from your enjoyment of the game, well I feel for your loss. But I just can't see the appeal, myself.

Then again, I'm a person who would rather play one course five times than five courses once. To me the pleasurable part of golf is knowing exactly what I need to do, having a clear mental image of where I want the ball to land and how it will bounce or roll from there and then attempting the shot I'm imagining. Once I've played a given hole quite a few times or once I've played it to exactly the same hole location even two or three times, any mystery about "dead ground" or "visual deception" or those other beard-puller's pleasures are pretty much out the window.

I had a shot yesterday with 104 yards to the hole. I knew the distance, I knew that anything more than 8 yards past the flag would bounce over the green, dead. I knew that anything more than 5 yards short would fail to stay on the upper tier and would end up rolling 30, 40, 50 feet away leaving a tough 2-putt. I opted for playing a 100-yard shot and it came up just short, paused for a second, then slowly trickled all the way back to the front of the green.

How would that experience have been improved if instead of knowing that it was 104 to the hole I just eyeballed it and knew it was somewhere between 98 and 110 yards? I prefer knowing that if I can land a pitching wedge shot in that narrow little window I'll have a makeable birdie putt and if I miss that known window I may not make par. If I did not know the exact distance the prudent play would have been 20 feet left of the hole, take plenty of club and play for a long putt from the back fringe. Without knowing the distance my chances of a makeable birdie putt go from 1-in-4 to maybe 1-in10 or 1-in-20 just because there's not just a perfect shot required but a perfect shot and a perfect guess as to distance.

In the end, it could down to whether guessing distances is a pleasurable pastime. As I said, if you really get off on guessing distances then I hope you're able to somehow insulate yourself from the near-ubiquitous yardage information that's a normative part of the game today. But it's a niche desire that doesn't necessarily get catered to in every round of golf.