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We’ve now had time to get used to the many new rules issued by the USGA and the R&A in 2019, (even though it seems like they were implemented just yesterday).
Perhaps the change causing the most conversation is whether to leave the flagstick IN or OUT. It seems that whenever I’m playing with an unfamiliar group, the question on the first green is “are you an innie or an outie?”
This video based on results of 1,000 actual putts confirms what the short game experts have long reported. Leave the flag in.
Short game guru Dave Pelz, who I recently saw at the PGA Show, studied this even before the rule change allowing you to leave the flag in. He wrote in Golf Digest in 1990: “The testing was performed with a special putting device built to roll putts accurately aimed with a laser—and a true, pure roll—from two feet away. We rolled putts at different speeds hitting different parts of the pin on flat, uphill and downhill sloping greens. The test results were conclusive: You will hole a higher percentage of putts when you leave the flagstick in.”
There you have it. One added bonus for leaving the flagstick in is that it should help with pace of play and no one can complain about that.
