‘There have been raised eyebrows!’ Tour makes major rule change for new season

Those hoping to make their way up to the LPGA Tour this year have been handed a huge boost thanks to a rule change.

The Epson Tour’s 2025 season gets underway in Florida this week – and it promises to be wheely good. (Sorry.)

The reason for the dreadful pun is because players competing on the second-tier circuit, which is an official qualifying tour for the LPGA, will now be allowed to use electric pushcarts.

Jody Brothers, the Epson Tour’s chief business and operating officer, is behind the rule change.

As with everything in golf, he explained, it largely comes down to money. Specifically, not everyone playing on the developmental tour can afford a caddie, so they will either use friends or family, a regular pushcart, or none of the above.

“When I saw some of these athletes carrying their own bag and or pushing a cart, I was like, ‘Well, that seems weird too.’ You’ve got somebody who has the financial resources or the backing to have a professional caddie, and somebody out here that’s maybe just scraping by and has a winter job and is a really talented player, but they just don’t have the resources to hire a caddie yet.

“It feels like there is a gap in performance that needs to be bridged a little bit. Personally, I use an electric motorized caddie when I play at my home club, and I thought, ‘There’s got to be a way that we can make this work on the Epson Tour.’ I was shocked to find out that we had a regulation against it.”

So Brothers used his power to change the rules.

• The best electric trolleys of 2025

• The best pushcarts of 2025

• The best cart bags of 2025

“The change in our player regulations will have a monumental impact on our athletes who do not regularly utilize a caddy,” he added.

“Our goal as a tour is to make the dream of playing on the LPGA Tour accessible for all our members, and this is a significant step in the right direction.”

Now we know what you’re thinking. Electric trolleys are also expensive. Brothers thought of that, too, so he reached out to MGI Golf – a company which specializes in just this area – to partner with the tour in this bold new battery-powered era.

As a result, Epson Tour players will be offered discounted prices for the carts, which, according to the brand’s website, range from $1,199 to $2,449, while MGI will also sign some on as ambassadors.

So how have the players reacted?

“There’s been a few raised eyebrows,” Brothers added. “That’s maybe some of the more purists, and maybe some of the athletes that have played on the LPGA Tour and were just surprised more than anything that we would put this into play.”

Well, we’re on board.

And, whisper it, it might just help the pace of play…