HOBE SOUND, Fla. -- The U.S. Golf Association's new Local Rule allowing the use of range finders won't take effect until next year, but the devices were used at this week's Florida Open at Loblolly Pines Golf Course in Hobe Sound, Fla.

Virtually every player in the 144-man field reportedly used a range finder, with most employing the Laser Links' pistol-shaped Quick Shot. Laser Link Golf President and Founder Rob O'Loughlin was an interested spectator at Loblolly.

"There was a cloud of suspicion that followed everybody in the range finder business the past 11 years," he told PGA.com as he stood under cloudy skies along Florida's Gold Coast. "The USGA has allowed the posting of handicaps using range finders or GPS systems since 1994, but deep down, everybody sort of looked at them and said, 'That's really not legal. You can do it, but it's just not kosher.'"

The USGA's formal approval of range finders in tournaments, O'Loughlin said, is basically the same as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

"The reason we've got it is because the USGA and the [Royal & Ancient Golf Club] recognized that the information is already out there, people are going to get it, and this is a faster way to get it," O'Loughlin said.

For O'Loughlin, changing golfers' habits is nothing new. He's the co-founder and original president of Softspikes, the company that revolutionized the alternative cleat market in the mid-1990s. Today, nearly every golf shoe on the market has Softspikes or another form of alternative cleat. O'Loughlin, who was Softspikes' chairman until 2001, is confident he can duplicate that success with Laser Link.

"We [Softspikes] wanted to do something good for the game of golf," O'Loughlin said. "We focused on upscale private clubs like Loblolly. People said to us, 'You guys sold 12,000 golf courses.' That's not true. We sold 400. The business plan we're doing with Laser Link is identical. If you get the best guys, everybody else will figure it out."