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From the Executive Golfer Weekly digest:
July 15, 2024In 2019, the USGA allowed the flagstick to remain in the cup when putting on the green.
Is that the right decision to give yourself the best opportunity to score?
According to the short game guru Dave Pelz…
– The hole is 4.25-inches wide.
– The diameter of a standard flagstick is typically 0.25-inch.
– If you look at the space left for a golf ball, the 2.125-inch half-hole minus the 0.25-inch half-pin leaves 1.875-inches between the cup edge and the pin.
– Golf balls are 1.68-inches in diameter. This leaves a .195-inch gap of open space for the ball to fit into the hole with the flagstick in place.“This doesn’t sound like much space, especially if the pin is leaning slightly toward the golfer. So, 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 make a higher percentage of putts when you leave the flagstick in. Why? A significant amount of energy is lost from a putt’s speed when the ball hits a fiberglass flagstick. The speed loss enables gravity to pull the slower-moving ball into the hole more often. Even though golf ball cover materials vary, holes and flagsticks have not, and the “energy-loss” effect will still win the day.” – Dave Pelz
Mark Pazdur
Publisher
Mark@ExecutiveGolferMagazine.comI like the pin out and agree with this reasoning: https://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-science-behind-why-the-flagstick-should-be-pulled-999-percent-of-the-time
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