A friend of mine, a local professional, once had an opportunity to caddie for Jack Nicklaus.  Jack was in town for a charity event and of course his tour caddy was not available, so as is often the case when a tour pro comes to town one of the local pros will caddy for him.  This is a great honor and in this case it was Jack Nicklaus (in his prime), my friend was as nervous as a cat in burlap.  The young pro had Jack’s yardage book and the days pin sheet, everything he needed to help the “great one” go about his business.  So after bombing his drive down the first hole, they found themselves dead in the middle of the fairway.  The young pro paced off the yardage, did his math to determine the exact yardage.  Jack looked his way and asked “what’s the distance to the flag?”  The young pro proudly looks Jack in the face and says “165, 166”, Jack responds, “Well which is it?”  You see my friend was a good player, he thought if he got the distance right to a few yards he was O.K., but Jack is a great player, Jack knows exactly how far he hits each club, Jack wants to know the exact yardage, his paycheck depends on it!

No matter what your skill level is you will shoot lower scores with more information.  For the perfectionist you need exact yardage, you need a laser range finder.  Perfectionists aim for exact spots, they want exact yardage, and there is only one way to get that, an accurate laser rangefinder.  The problem with laser rangefinders is that they take time to aim and record the yardage, this slows the pace.  This is definitely faster than pacing the yardage, but way slower than eyeballing or using a golf GPS unit.  In fact a golf GPS system is faster than eyeballing!  With a GPS, there are no buttons to push, or even guessing to do, you just look and in a glance you know the distance to the green (front, center and back), you decide where you want to land the ball, pull the club and hit.  The handheld GPS is accurate and has some advantages over the laser range finder.  With a laser it is unlikely you will ever be able to determine exactly how far it is to the front or back of the green.  Knowing these yardages is a big advantage; for example, if you have a back pin position while the GPS will not locate the flag exactly you will know the exact yardage to the back of the green, in a case such as this you would pull a club that you cannot hit long.  This strategy is extremely important in shooting lower scores.  In the same example with a laser you will have yardage to the pin, you won’t know how much room you have past the pin, so you have a tougher guess as to club selection.  A highly skilled player will easily solve this problem, but less skilled players will site the pin (let’s say 160 yards), pull his 160 club and not knowing exactly how much room is behind the pin can cost him a shot if he hits it too pure.  So my recommendation for the average player is a high quality golf GPS, because they give you all the information you need at a glance and it is very unlikely you will over-think a shot.  For the expert player both are great and maybe a top of the line laser would be best.  But in any case, to play good golf you need to keep your ball short of hazards, and out of greenside trouble.  You need to know how far you hit your clubs and unless you know how far you are away, you have no shot at your best golf!