The choice of champions: Why your favourite pro almost definitely uses a Bushnell rangefinder

While beloved at the amateur level, the humble rangefinder continues to be a bit of an enigma in the arena of professional golf. Some tournaments allow them, others don’t. Even when they are permitted, they’re only so in certain circumstances.

And while many tournament organisers are dragging their heels, the increasingly rampant discussion about the pace of play, much of which is spent with players and caddies agonising over yardage books, means we seem to be inching towards a future where rangefinders become an increasingly common sight on tour.
When they are allowed, however, Bushnell’s rangefinders the number one choice by a mind-blowing margin. In fact, Bushnell’s rangefinders are so overwhelmingly the favourite among pro players and caddies, the stats almost look fake. But they’re not.

A recent survey of the 156 competitors at this year’s open Championship found that 151 of them, a whopping 96.8%, trusted Bushnell rangefinders to gauge their distances throughout their practice rounds.

And while this seems too good to be true, consider this: another survey was made at this year’s Players Championship, where Bushnell rangefinders accounted for almost 99% of those used by the pro field.

With dozens of brands on the market these days, you might wonder why this is. The simple answer is performance and legacy: Bushnell has a reputation that stretches back generations, having been set up over 75 years ago in rural Kansas as one of the world’s very first organisations specialising in sporting optics.

The brand was the first to make precision binoculars and scopes available to the public at an affordable price, and nearly three decades ago took technology originally used by NASA and used it to create the world’s first laser rangefinder—an innovation first intended for hunting, but has since become the industry standard at all levels of golf.

The epitome of this rests in Bushnell’s flagship rangefinder, the Pro X3+LINK—the most recent evolution of a line that continues to offer pro-level players insights into distance and accuracy that other brands simply can’t. Beginning in 2019 with the Pro XE, the range introduced not only slope adjustment, but the ability for the rangefinder to independently measure wind direction and speed, barometric pressure and temperature, resulting in a true playing distance that’s simply unrivalled.

With the Pro X3+LINK now so ubiquitous at championship level, Bushnell have further refined the model to cater for the precise demands of the tour pro. With slope adjustment still banned at tour events, the Pro X3+LINK has a simple locking slider that switches off slope adjustment without the need to fiddle between settings.

There are, of course, countless imitators that have popped up in the decades since. But put simply, when it comes to companies that truly set the bar for excellence in golf optics, the conversation quite literally begins and ends with Bushnell.