Rangefinders all the rage on the course

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Webb Simpson was dead set against rangefinders at the PGA Championship, until he used them this week at the Ocean Course.

“We have seen how there’s a lot of situations where it it helps,” he said.

The PGA of America allowed the devices on Kiawah Island to maintain a steady pace of play. Players and their caddies are only to use rangefinders for distance, not for elevation changes or other features the devices may have.

Simpson discovered their usefulness in Friday’s second round. He was in the right rough on No. 10, planning his approach. “It’s a funky angle to that back left pin and my rangefinder got about 6 yards different than what we had come with,” he said. Simpson made par.

Jordan Spieth has used his rangefinder, mostly when he’s off line and needs information not in available yardage books.

Spieth doesn’t think they helped pace of play. “We had a really hard golf course and 20 mile-an-hour winds with 156 players the last two days,” he said. “Doesn’t matter what you do, it’s going to be really slow, rangefinders or not.”

Simpson’s unsure if the PGA Tour might one day consent to full-on rangefinders during tournaments. All he knows, though, is his view changed as he used that view-finder.

“The more we did it each round, the more I like it,” he said.

Low scores hard to come by: The wind was more manageable at Kiawah Island on Saturday, there were plenty of friendly hole locations and Pete Dye’s punishing seaside track still wasn’t set up to play its maximum distance.

Moving day at the PGA Championship? It could have been, but the leaderboard was mostly static.

Rickie Fowler, who teed off almost four hours before the final group of Phil Mickelson and Louis Oosthuizen, shot a 3-under 69 — the sixth and, as it turned out, the final round of the day in the 60s.

“Even though the wind being down a little bit from the last two days, it’s still a tough test from start to finish. Anything under par is a good thing, especially Saturday, to kind of move back up into — I guess a little bit the thick of things,” Fowler said.

His even-par total of 216 left him seven shots behind Mickelson, and given how the rest of the day played out, Fowler couldn’t have asked for much more.

The Ocean Course played to a scoring average of 73.0, 2 ½ shots easier than Friday’s second round. But Dye’s design and major championship pressure made 69 an elusive number.

Instead of moving, it felt like the major champions and world-class players chasing Mickelson were standing around watching him. He opened a five-shot lead before falling back with a bogey-double bogey stretch on the back nine.

Several contenders had a chance to break 70 but couldn’t finish it off.

A game within the game: Current Ryder Cup captains Steve Stricker of the United States and Padraig Harrington of Europe have their own competition going at the PGA Championship.

And it, too, is coming down the final day, much at the famed “War By The Shore” Ryder Cup matches did at the Ocean Course 30 years ago.

The team leaders for this year’s matches, set for September at Whistling Straits, are tied at 1 over through three rounds. Stricker fired his best round of the week with a 2-under 70 on Saturday. Harrington, a three-time major champ who won this title in 2008, shot a 73.

The Ocean Course was built by architect Pete Dye for the 1991 Ryder Cup. It earned its nickname competition between the teams and the fervor of the fans. The United States won that one when Europe’s Bernhard Langer missed a short putt on the 18th hole.