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 notes (more on that in a moment) and an elementary-school version of what had become graduate-level information but they will have to do the bulk of the work with their eyes and feet.
In a note to players, the PGA Tour wrote that this new rule is designed to “return to a position where players and caddies use their skill and judgment, along with any information gained through experience, preparation and practice to read the line of play on the putting green.”
It tilts the equation back in favor of skill over science.
Reading greens is a skill and an art. It’s about seeing and feeling and trusting yourself without the benefit of knowing that the last three feet of a putt will travel over a 2-degree left to right slope because a book told you so.
The case can be made – and it was by several players – that the use of green-reading books nullified the advantage held by players and caddies who excel in reading greens. The books gave other players the information the better players might figure out on their own.
Don’t believe me? Ask Brad Faxon, a grandmaster of putting.
“(Reading greens) is a huge art and a huge skill that has to be acquired,” Faxon said. “They learn green reading organically by watching balls roll. That comes from years and years.
“With these greens books, they tell everyone. The hardest putts are straight or just off straight. Now you’re given the answer.”
Webb Simpson offers a different perspective.
“I agree that reading greens is a skill but they act like reading a greens book is not a skill,” Simpson said. “It is a learned skill.”
If nothing else – and hopefully this isn’t wishful thinking – this will save a few seconds here and there during competition. How many times have we seen players study a putt, read their book, get set up then step away, only to pull the book from their back pocket and re-read the squiggly lines printed there?
New 2022 yardage books will be printed for every event and they will include “general” information about the slopes and features of each green. That means big slopes (4.5 percent slope or more) will be shown. The smaller slopes will not be shown.
The tricky part, and there’s always a tricky part, is how much information players will be allowed to have in the yardage books they already carry.
Old yardage books, the kind players keep from year to year at their regular tour stops, won’t be allowed any more. By the way, it’s a local rule adopted by the tour, so detailed books will still be allowed if your club has them or if you are playing a USGA or R&A event. This is a PGA Tour thing.
New 2022 yardage books will be printed for every event and they will include “general” information about the slopes and features of each green. That means big slopes (4.5 percent slope or more) will be shown. The smaller slopes will not be shown.
Players and caddies will be allowed to add their own notes to each book but they can’t recreate the diagrams of each green from old greens books. The better a player’s memory, the more information he can put in his yardage book.
Exactly how detailed a player gets in his new yardage book could be tricky. In other words, don’t claim a photographic memory if your book shows the degree of slope on every part of the fifth green at Colonial.
Don’t bring a level to practice rounds and put it on the ground, charting your own research. Don’t copy information from other sources, such as old green-reading books. Don’t let someone else write in your approved yardage book. Only the player and his caddie are allowed to make notes in their own book.
In other words – use your feet, use your eyes, use your memory.
The old-fashioned way.