If it were up to him, Tiger Woods would outlaw belly and other long putters of the type that helped Keegan Bradley win last year’s PGA Championship, Deutsche Bank champ Webb Simpson come up just short of earning the 2011 money title, and Bill Haas capture the 2011 FedEx Cup.
With USGA chief executive Mike Davis conceding Saturday that his organization may consider prohibiting the elongated putters that were all the rage at last month’s PGA Merchandise Show, Woods weighed in with his opposition to clubs that golfers anchor to certain body parts.
“I’ve never been a fan of it,” Woods said Tuesday about the method that lets golfers brace putters against their bellies or chests and stroke balls in ways that many purists believe violate the spirit of the Rules of Golf.
Count Woods among the anti-belly-ites. “I believe it’s the art of controlling the body and club and swinging the pendulum motion,” he said. “I believe that’s how it should be played. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to that.”
Woods, speaking to reporters prior to this week’s Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, offered an alternative to an outright ban on the big sticks. He encouraged golf’s rules-making bodies to proscribe putters longer than a golfer’s shortest club. Ensuring that flat sticks were no longer than their sand wedges would force players to deploy a pendulum motion in a more controlled stroke, he said.
Woods acknowledged that he and Royal & Ancient chief executive Peter Dawson had discussed ways to deal with the belly putter issue.
“My idea was to have it so that the putter would be equal to or less than the shortest club in your bag,” Woods said. “And I think with that we’d be able to get away from any type of belly anchoring.”
The USGA’s formerly laissez-faire approach to long putters changed after the 2011 successes of Bradley, et al, made them ” a much bigger topic,” Davis told Golfweek after his group’s annual meeting.
Davis stopped short of predicting a ruling on the subject, but noted that the USGA would investigate “all the angles and thinking about what is in the best interests both of the traditions of the game, the history of the game, and what we think would be good for the game.”
Related posts:
- Keegan Bradley could teach Tiger Woods a thing or two about belly putters
- Rocco Mediate makes like Keegan Bradley, adds belly putter to his bag at Frys.com Open
- Driscoll to employ belly putter he wants banned
- Villegas is newest member of the belly putter brigade
- Mickelson tinkers with belly putter at Deutsche Bank Championship
