Turning Back The Putting Clock

Phil Mickelson examines his green-reading book during the recent Furyk & Friends event on the PGA Champions Tour. Photo: Ben Jared, PGA Tour via Getty Images

The old-fashioned way doesn’t exist in places these days.

Pay phones. Newspapers. Not feeling guilty about eating fried food.

All things of the past.

Golf is no different. It has enough technology to impress Elon Musk and if you’re hitting clubs from five years ago, you might as well be wearing Sansabelts (and maybe some of you are).

But the age of too much information just lost a big one.

Green-reading books – those ultra-detailed, pocket-sized topographic maps of putting surfaces that have done as much to slow down play on the PGA Tour as pre-shot routines – won’t be allowed as of Jan. 1, 2022.

It’s a win for the game.

Despite their use of greens books, the players didn’t plant their Scotty Camerons in the turf and draw a line in the bent grass to defend their right to use them. They did the right thing.

Players will still be looking at their own ...