golfrewind.com

Why are these illegal? Seems to me that the USGA should allow these as the pro's have caddies who have yardages marked down to every blade of grass on a hole. Since most courses no longer have caddies and more and more courses are going to GPS systems in their carts, why not allow laser range finders? Just seems to make sense to me.

You bring up a good point. The GPS system would be illegal to use during a USGA sanctioned competition too.

The principle involved is the removal of human skill, experience, and judgement being replaced by some "artificial" device. Interestingly, the laser range finders are used by many caddies in preparing their yardage books prior to the tournament beginning; their use is just not allowed during the competition itself, where the golfer and his caddy must rely on experience and judgement rather than the device.

Forbidding the use of range finders may seem to be a silly restriction, but it does prevent the use of anything other than the players' and caddies' knowledge during competitive rounds.

I believe there's been talk of making them legal to use in the next rules revision. They've mentioned something about it speeding up play and getting the exact kind of yardages that only a caddie or local knowledge could provide before.

Tom Meeks mentioned that it was in the works (meaning debating) at the USGA with the consensus leaning toward allowing them for pace of play reasons. The thought is that the player is going to get his/her yardage regardless and the range finder would just make it quicker. Especially after blowing the tee shot onto an adjacent fairway and attempting to extrapolate your distance based on an irrigation head 75 yds away.