There will be fewer people celebrating on New Year’s Day in 2016.
Fewer golfers, certainly.
At the end of December, a rule banning anchored putting strokes goes into effect: specifically Rule 14-1b, which the USGA and R&A jointly proposed and enacted to curtail the use of longer-shafted putters that have become more fashionable in recent years.
Golf’s governing bodies couldn’t ban the “belly” and “broomstick-handle” putters wielded by four major championship winners from 2011-13, so they decided to outlaw the strokes in which golfers anchor the butt end of their super-sized putter to a part of their body (e.g., stomach, chest, chin) to create a pendulum motion.
It seems silly, if not patently unfair, to change the rule now, considering that the use of longer putters on tour dates back to 1965, when the first patent for the belly putter was approved and a year before Phil Rodgers won twice on the PGA Tour with a 39½-inch putter anchored in his gut.
Anchored putting strokes with unconventional putters have always been legal and used over the past 30 years by pros such as Rocco Mediate, Paul Azinger, Bruce Lietzke, Scott McCarron, Tim Clark, Carl Pettersson and Bernhard Langer.
There wasn’t much commotion in 1991 when Mediate became the first player to win a PGA Tour event, the Doral-Ryder Open, with a broomstick putter anchored to his sternum or when Azinger reintroduced the belly putter to the tour in 2000 and won his first event, the Sony Open in Hawaii, by seven strokes. And nobody seemed to protest that Clark and Pettersson have used over-sized putters their entire careers.
But all that changed after Keegan Bradley became the first player to win a major using a belly putter at the 2011 PGA Championship; then Webb Simpson won the 2012 U.S. Open with one and Ernie Els did the same in 2012 at the British Open.
Suddenly, there were whispers about the possibility of banning unconventional putters, and in November 2012 the USGA and R&A announced their proposed rule change. While the issue was being debated, Adam Scott became the first player to win a major with a broomstick putter at the 2013 Masters. That’s why it was hardly a surprise when the official announcement of the new rule came in May 2013 – supposedly for the “betterment of the game” – along with a proviso it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2016.
That day arrives soon. So now what?
Langer, coming off his second consecutive Schwab Cup title and record third on the Champions Tour, has been using a broomstick-handle putter for nearly two decades with spectacular results. He made the change after battling the putting “yips” in the late 1990s and he has won 23 Champions events and seven money titles since 2008. He makes it clear he doesn’t understand the rationale for the rule change, especially with only 15 percent of tour players around the world using unconventional putters and none winning majors until recently. Langer also chose to delay the inevitable by deciding not to experiment with the shorter putter in competition this season, a la long-putter players such as Simpson, Bradley, Els and Scott who did.
“I’m on the back nine of my career, for sure. I’m 58, so we’ll see what happens,” Langer said. “But I love the game and love to compete, so I’ll find a way.”
During last month’s Toshiba Classic in Newport Beach, I asked UCLA alumnus Scott McCarron, in his first season on the Champions Tour, what he plans to do in 2016 with the broomstick-handle putter he has used for years.
“I’m going to putt with the same putter, just not anchor it,” he said. “I’ve practiced, I’ve played tournaments that way already, and it doesn’t make that much of a difference at all. And I hope everybody with long putters keeps using them and just not anchor it. … I don’t think it’s much of a transition. You just hold it (away from your body) fairly steady and go ahead and putt away. It’s the same type of movement.”
Another possible adjustment for players required to change their stroke is the putting method Matt Kuchar employs. He uses a belly putter but anchors it to his left forearm instead of to his body. That is legal, at least for now.
Fair or unfair, the anchor is being dropped. Beginning in January, it’s up to the belly-and-broomstick brigade to navigate a new route to an old destination.
