Governing bodies to announce long-awaited rule change on putters

Golf’s governing bodies are today expected to announce a significant rules change regarding putters, specifically whether players will be allowed to anchor the club to their body during the stroke.

For months, the US Golf Association and the R&A — which administers the game outside of the US and Mexico — have been mulling a change to the rules that would prohibit anchoring the club, a practice that has become more common with long putters and belly putters. If such a rule is proposed or enacted, it likely would not go into effect until 2016, when golf’s rule book could be updated.

USGA executive director Mike Davis and R&A chief executive Peter Dawson had both promised some direction on the rule by the end of the year. Although long putters have been around for decades, the issue has taken on more importance of late, especially with three of the past five Major champions using a belly putter.

Any ruling would ban not the putters but anchoring. So a player still could use a long putter so long as he does not rest his hand against his chest during the stroke; same for the belly putter, as long as it is not pressed up against the body.

Rocco Mediate became the first player to win a PGA Tour event using a long putter in 1991; Paul Azinger was the first to win using a belly putter in 2000. But when Keegan Bradley became the first to win a major championship using a belly putter by capturing the 2011 PGA Championship, the debate intensified. Webb Simpson, who uses a belly putter, won the 2012 US Open, followed by Ernie Els at the Open Championship.

Els had been outspoken in his distaste for the putters, going back as far as 2004 when he felt that the clubs should be banned.

“Take a tablet,” he said at the time, referring to a player’s ability to calm his nerves. Even last year, after grudgingly using a belly putter after his own troubles on the greens, Els said he felt the clubs should be outlawed but joked that “as long as they allowed it, I’ll keep cheating.”

But recently, Els’ thoughts have changed. He now understands where those who use such putters are coming from. Els noted that using a belly putter is not automatic, and it takes plenty of practice to figure out how to use one. And those against a ban point out that none of the game’s top putters use one.

But veterans like Tom Watson and Arnold Palmer have spoken out against anchoring, saying it is not a true golf stroke. Brandt Snedeker, who won the FedEx Cup in 2012 and was the PGA Tour’s leader in a statistic called strokes gained putting, also favours a ban.