PGA Tour to test distance technology at multiple tournaments during 2025 season

Yahoo

30-01-2025

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Those distance-measuring devices that most recreation golfers use all the time to determine what club to hit? They may be coming to PGA Tour events before too long.
During a roundtable conversation with members of the media on Wednesday morning at the 2025 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, top officials with the PGA Tour shared that it intends to test distance-measuring devices during multiple events this season.
Gary Young, the Tour's senior vice president of rules and competition, said that both players and fans have suggested that DMD's could help pace-of-play issues on the Tour.
'The use of distance-measuring devices has been brought up and this particular Rules committee is very accepting of that. It's been tested on the Korn Ferry Tour level (for a month during 2017) and for a full year on PGA Tour Champions. Why not?' Young said. 'We're hearing it from our fans. They use it day in and day out, why would we hold a resource back from the players that potentially could help them, especially for off-line shots, getting a quick reference point?'
Added Andy Weitz, chief marketing and communications officer and executive vice president of investor relations. 'We want to better understand how being out of position, how the ability to better understand the distance can not only increase the pace of play potentially but also send a signal to our fans that we are evolving and use of these modern devices could be a fit for the PGA Tour on a permanent basis in the future.'
It is still to be determined what tournaments will be used to test DMDs.
'I think where we will see the biggest benefit to them are in some of our smaller fields when we are in pairs. So we'd like to have a sample possibly of some of our signature events at the same time during a period when we'll have some opposite events and a different format, maybe, like a team event, a Zurich. Just so we get a good sample of it,' Young said. 'Where we really see this paying the biggest benefits will be on approach shots, so, we'll be able to do a look back and do a comparison just to see if we are actually gaining time.'
The Tour also disclosed that a new sub-committee made up of Player Advisory Council members Sam Burns, Adam Schenk and Jhonnatan Vegas has been created to study pace-of-play issues.
Tyler Dennis, chief competitions officer, added that while a previous study of DMD's was conducted on the Korn Ferry Tour before the difference now is that ShotLink brings a lot more information to the table. 'We haven't defined how we're going to do it yet but we want it to be this year,' he said.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour will test distance-measuring devices during events in 2025