Padraig Harrington Proposed a Simple Way to Improve Pace of Play After Senior PGA Championship

Padraig Harrington may have lost the Senior PGA Championship to Steve Stricker in a one-hole sudden-death playoff, but he still had several positives to take away from the tournament—not just about his own game, but about competitive golf as a whole. 

Harrington, who finished at 18 under par for the championship after a hilarious gaffe on the 16th hole on Saturday, took to Twitter to share some thoughts about the Senior PGA, as well as the PGA Championship, where he finished T50. 

His message happened to touch on one of the most controversial topics in professional golf as of late. 

“After using a range finder for the last 2 weeks @PGAChampionship and @SeniorPGAChamp, I’ve come round to believing that we should use them in all tournaments. They really help with pace of play when players are out of position with an awkward yardage,” Harrington wrote. 

According to Harrington, the use of rangefinders to calculate yardages dramatically improved speed of play at the two events. 

The allowance of rangefinders especially helped when players found themselves in unlikely spots on the golf course that weren’t necessarily marked in yardage books. 

For context, the PGA of America—which is not the same as the PGA Tour—runs the PGA Championship and the Senior PGA (as well as next month’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship). 

In 2021, the organization announced that players will be permitted to use distance measuring devices during those three championships.

The PGA Tour and the other three men’s major championships do not allow the use of rangefinders, but considering Harrington’s observations, maybe those events should start to rethink such policies.