Sobb: Tournament a great chance to see future PGA stars
If you have the opportunity to come watch the future stars of the PGA Tour play in the Web.com's Rust-Oleum Championship at The Ivanhoe Club this week, you should take it.
Not only are you going to witness up close some great golf at a great venue, but you're going to see something you're not use to seeing.
The Rust-Oleum Championship is the third test site of four this year on the Web.com Tour that will allow players and caddies to use electronic rangefinders during the competition.
While the use of rangefinders is against the current rules, congratulations to Web.com / PGA Tour officials for advancing this initiative.
Not only will rangefinders actually help to speed up play (you don't have to walk off distances from a sprinkler head to get actual yardage), but they give the player the most accurate distances electronically to the pin, a bunker, a water hazard, a tree, etc.
Will rangefinders make caddies obsolete?
Not in the least, in my estimation.
I believe it makes caddies more valuable by allowing them to focus on the player's overall game and not just computing yardage to a target from a sprinkler head and putting human error into the equation.
Ask the Pro:
If you have a golf question, please submit it to golftips@ivanhoeclub.com for future consideration. While I can't answer every question, I'll include ones of general interest in future columns.
• Jim Sobb is the PGA director of golf at Ivanhoe Club in Ivanhoe, IL. A member of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame, Sobb is a three-time winner of the Illinois PGA Championship, with eight major championships in Illinois PGA events overall, and is a two-time Illinois PGA Golf Professional of the Year. For more on Jim and Ivanhoe Club, the home of the 2017 Rust-Oleum Championship (June 5-11), visit ivanhoeclub.com.