In an effort to speed up the play of golf the rules of golf received a long overdue overhaul at the beginning of this year by the USGA and R&A. One of the more controversial changes to the rules allows for golfers to leave the flag stick in the hole while putting. The adoption of this new change, at least in my regular Saturday group, has been hit or miss up to now. There’s no doubt that this change speeds up the pace of play, but the question that I hear is, “is leaving the flag stick in while putting an advantage or a disadvantage? What do you think?
Well the good folks over at mygolfspy.com set out to answer that question. Some of the findings of their testing were quite interesting. The test and results can be found here: https://mygolfspy.com/flagstick-in-flagstick-out-2019-new-golf-rules/. But if you’re in a hurry and want the executive summary it’s simply this; Always leave the flag stick in while putting — period! Check out the article.