Over the past 10 years, this has been a question frequently asked. In today’s game, golfers competing on the major tours throughout the world are being given detailed yardage books for each tournament they play in. These books feature yardages throughout most points on the course, hole layouts, but most importantly, green maps. Green maps show players the size of greens, potential pin locations, and extremely detailed slopes of the putting surface — think of them as very precise topographical maps. But, should the best players in the world really be given all these details? (Certainly, the USGA no longer thinks so).

Golfers must be more than just someone who can swing a club. They must be mentally tough, physically fit, and be able to visualize shots. A golfer must use all these factors to post a solid score. Green reading is the most important skills involved in the game, and visualizing shots. Giving a professional golfer, who is the best in the world, a green map, takes a lot putting stress off their back. Because a pro can see the movement of each putt on a golf course with their detailed green map, no longer do they deal with misreads, like us amateurs. If a golfer is on tour competing for millions of dollars week in and week out, shouldn’t they be able to read all putts without any help from their yardage book? It is something amateur players deal with every time they play.

In the example below, you can see the hundreds of arrows within the green showing the player every way a putt or chip could break no matter where they are hitting the shot from. The closer the horizontal lines at the bottom of the green indicate a false front. As these lines get further apart, it represents a less steep slope. Every professional that uses a green map like the one below, knows each break of a putt, making putting significantly easier. Wouldn’t it be nice to have this much detail as amateurs?

On the other hand, professionals are indeed playing for millions of dollars. Every drive, iron shot, and putt mean so much. One false read without a green map could cost the player thousands. On tour, greens and putts are much tougher, so some could consider it fair that professional golfers get green maps in their yardage books.

In 2019, the USGA and RNA have put restrictions on these green maps. They have limited the amount of detail a player gets. In the green below, we notice that there are not as many arrows or lines showing every break on the green. It will be interesting to see if the conflict of players getting green maps continue after they have been restricted so much for 2019. In the photograph below, you can still see the major slopes of the green, but not even close to the amount of detail you see in the first example. Could this be an even medium to solve the amount of information PGA Tour players are given about greens?

Professional golfers getting greens maps is a topic that is questioned throughout the golfing community often. Both sides of the arguments have pros and cons.

Do you believe professional golfers are getting too much information about greens, or do you believe golfers are given the right amount of information?