The irony was rich for those who picked up on it.
Less than a week after the R&A announced major changes to nine of the holes at the Old Course at St. Andrews, the birthplace of golf, prior to the 2015 Open Championship, there was R&A Chief Executive Peter Dawson taking a stand against long putters.
“The R&A and USGA are announcing a proposed rule change which prohibits the anchoring of a club during a stroke,” Dawson said in a joint teleconference with USGA Executive Director Mike Davis. “Anchored strokes have quickly become the preferred options for a number of players. ... Our conclusion is that anchored strokes threaten to replace traditional strokes. ... The proposed change would take place on January 1, 2016.”
When you look at the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent designing and redesigning courses to keep up with ball and driver technology, to even pretend that the long putter is somehow a threat to the game seems, at best, out of touch, and at worst, depressingly cynical.
Even though anchoring a long putter has been around since the 1930s and many seniors were giving “broom-handle” putters a try in the 1980s, Paul Azinger brought the belly putter to the forefront in 2000.
“I fluked on it,” Azinger said the night before the R&A and USGA announcement. “I was going through the rack at my home club during a time when I was putting terribly and this was a putter that some short guy had been anchoring under his chin. He was short enough and I was tall enough that I could stick it in my bellybutton. So I started fooling around with it and every putt I hit in the shop hit the leg of the chair or the corner of the counter where I was aiming. I asked if I could take it outside and give it a try and I was immediately better with it.”
He put it in play during the off-season at the Mixed Team event.
“The first thing I did was check to make sure it was legal. I was happy to hear that there was no rule against it. My next tournament was the (2000) Hawaiian Open and I won by seven shots. But I never won again.”
Even then, players didn’t rush to anchor putters in their guts.
“For 11 or 12 years, it had been out there and the rap was that if you used it, you must be putting awful,” Azinger said. “It was kind of like cross-handed. Tiger laughed at me at the Ryder Cup in 2002 when I used it. Then, out of nowhere, Keegan Bradley won with it. Phil Mickelson started trying it, which is when people really started to take notice. And then Ernie Els just happened to be the right place at the right time and won the British Open with it, and suddenly it became an important issue.”
Granted, about 20 percent of the field at the final stage of Q-School this week is using some form of a long putter, but as Tiger Woods said on Tuesday prior to his World Challenge event at Sherwood Country Club, “I’m not sure if there is any statistical data on it. I’m sure there is somewhere.”
But there isn’t, at least none that makes sense. Dawson admitted as much. "There is no control data," he said. "This proposed rule change is not performance related."
“It’s laughable in comparison to the metal driver,” Azinger said. “If you compare the Great Big Bertha, which came out in the early 1990s, to the biggest wooden driver on tour at the time, the Great Big Bertha made that driver look like a 4-wood. And now, Great Big Bertha looks like a 4-wood. And that technology has so radically changed the game that millions must be spent to keep the greatest courses in the world from becoming obsolete. So, to attack a putter that is only being used by guys who struggle with their putting is laughable.”
Equally laughable is the idea that belly putters are, in any way, a threat to the integrity of the game. If you look at the three major championships won with long putters – and, remember, it’s three since Zinger won in Hawaii with the belly putter 48 majors ago – you had Keegan Bradley, who was only in a position to win the PGA Championship because Jason Dufner blew it on the back nine at Atlanta Athletic Club; Webb Simpson, who won the U.S. Open sitting the clubhouse with his wife because Jim Furyk couldn’t make three closing pars; and Ernie Els, who also won watching Adam Scott miss putt after putt with his long putter at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.
“I was there and watched every shot, and Ernie Els won that major in spite of his putting, not because of it,” Azinger said. “His ball striking was far superior to the field that week, and I watched him miss putt after putt.
“If you look at the top putters in the game, I don’t know if any of them use the belly putter and if so, it’s certainly not a big number. Phil Mickelson was worse with the bully putter, so not everybody is going to be better with it. But everybody, to a man, is going to hit it longer with today’s medal club than with the wooden clubs of yesteryear. So, you tell me what has changed the game more.
“It doesn’t make sense. You have drivers that you can change the loft, and the lie angle, and the how much hook or fade you want. But you’re going after a tiny percentage of people who use the bully putter?”
Not everyone will be adversely affected, or so they say. Steve Flesch anchors the putter and insists that it should be banned. Bradley and Simpson say they have been working with the short putter for some time in anticipation of this ruling.
But there are plenty who will struggle.
“I feel for the guy who started using the belly putter in 2000 at age 14, and now he’s trying to make a living playing golf and earn his card,” Azinger said. “Now he’s going to have to change having known nothing else. I feel for that guy.”