Top Five Incendiary Storylines from the 2019 PGA Tour Season

5. Flagstick In or Out?

In the USGA’s efforts to “modernize” the rules of golf, it has inadvertently created a monster. The initial rationale behind allowing all golfers to leave the flagstick in while putting was to improve the pace of play. On January 1st of 2019, the new rule was instated and, very quickly, a host of reports concluded that leaving the flagstick in was an advantage versus leaving it out. Oh boy.

Some of the more eccentric professional golfers utilized the new rule and vehemently defended their decisions to leave the flagstick in it despite the backlash about the optics of making a winning putt with the flagstick in. Bryson DeChambeau (who appears more than once in this piece) was the vanguard of the early flagstick-in movement but has recently loosened his approach as more studies have come out contradicting those early reports.

Adam Scott is another who leaves the flagstick in, but his eagerness to do so is understandable considering he’s tried everything else under the sun to fix his putting on the PGA Tour.

In April, Golf Digest conducted a comprehensive test of whether or not leaving the flagstick in is an advantage. They concluded that the flagstick is only an advantage on .01% of putts and should be pulled for the other 99.99%.

The test measured the results of putts rolled at various speeds and striking the flagstick at different angles against the results of pulling the flagstick out. Only in the rare case when a putt is rolling more than nine feet past the hole and striking the flagstick dead-center is leaving the flagstick in beneficial.

Even so, the material of the flagstick can affect whether a putt stays in the hole or not. Of 90 putts rolling 4½ feet past the hole and striking a tapered flagstick off-center, only 32 putts were holed compared to 81 of 90 with the flagstick out.

But mere science cannot quell the firebrand debate about the flagstick, otherwise, it wouldn’t be on this list. Almost a year in, the debate rages on at all levels of golf. It plays out on the golf course when inevitably at least one person in your foursome can’t make up their mind about it.

Can you pull the flag? Actually, can you put it back in? Ah, never mind that’s fine. It plays out at the 19th hole where the debate takes on new life, not unlike one of climate change. The science says you should take it out! No, the science says you should leave it in! Well, I don’t like the feel of leaving it in. Well maybe that’s why you’re a terrible putter and the planet is dying!

The true winners of the Great Flagstick Debate are the golfers who were already leaving the flagstick in. The lazy ones (or those with back problems). 20 feet? Ah, that’s too far. It also spares the power struggle between playing partners over who has to pick the flagstick up.

Nothing is more disheartening in this world than having to replace the flagstick after three-putting for double-bogey. I can hear my playing partners snickering, “Yeah, pick that flagstick up you three-putt loser.”