USGA, R&A move forward with ban on anchored putting

Carl Pettersson and Webb Simpson, with a USGA-mandated ban on long putters looming, are fiddling around with flat sticks of a more conventional length. Meanwhile, President Obama isn’t having much luck on the greens on Martha’s Vineyard with his blade.

Pettersson, a sweeper of the broomstick for 16 years, employed a shorter wand during the British Open and a few other rounds earlier this season and pronounced himself satisfied with the experiment. Still, the winner of five PGA Tour events switched back to the tried-and-true for this week’s Wyndham Championship.

The USGA on Wednesday thanked the PGA Tour and PGA of America for caving in and supporting its impending ban on anchored putting and showed its gratitude by nixing the suggestion that the governing body delay the rule change for recreational players.

The two groups announced on Monday that they had turned tail from their original vehement opposition to the scheme that will force golfers like reigning Masters champ Adam Scott and 2012 U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson to stop jamming long putters into guts, chests, or any other body parts, and would fall in line with the USGA and R&A’s Rule 14-1b. While doing so, they suggested -- as the USGA did in 2008 with the grooves rule -- that the regulators give amateurs time beyond the Jan. 1, 2016, deadline for elite golfers to make the switch.

Adam Scott and eight other PGA Tour players believe they got the short end of the stick when the USGA and R&A decided to ban the anchored putting stroke. But the nine guys who affix belly and longer putters to their bodies and considered bringing legal action over the rule change won’t sue after all.

“We expected it and everyone continues to believe it’s a bad rule, irrational, without any kind of logic or basis,” Harry Manion, who served as the group’s attorney until tour commissioner Tim Finchem announced Monday his association would adopt the anchoring ban, told SBNation Tuesday. “But they understand that the tour wants one set of rules, at least for now, and I think they’re please that it didn’t get accelerated.”

The PGA Tour will adopt the USGA’s ban on anchored putting strokes as of Jan. 1, 2016, the tour’s policy board announced Monday.

The new Rule 14-1b will apply to tour events as of the date mandated by golf’s governors, the USGA and R&A, though the tour board recommended that amateurs have more time to comply with the regulation.

Adam Scott, the first Australian to win the Masters and the first golfer to earn a major championship with a broomstick putter, revealed Friday that he is one of nine PGA Tour players who may go to court to preserve the right to anchor their flat sticks.

Scott joined Tim Clark and Carl Pettersson as three of the nine players to come out about their affiliation with Boston-based attorney, Harry Manion.

Tim Clark, worried about his golf-playing future if the PGA Tour ends up backing the USGA and R&A’s impending ban on anchored putting, would rather fight the new law than switch to a short putter.

Clark, whose passionate defense of anchoring helped convince several tour players and commissioner Tim Finchem that prohibiting it made no sense, has banded together with Carl Pettersson and seven others who are prepared to take golf’s governing bodies to court over the issue.

Tim Clark may sue, Webb Simpson wants separate rules, Ernie Els switch by year’s end, and Keegan Bradley is rooting for a Boston sports team for which long flat sticks are the only option.

Remembering anchoring and the ban on the putting stroke Clark, Simpson, Els, Bradley, and a host of other PGA Tour and everyday players use that will be illegal come 2016? During the interruption of our regularly scheduled program, when Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia played through, golfers other than the two warring adversaries weighed in on Tuesday’s news from the USGA and R&A that could have a jarring impact on the way they ply their trades.

Welp, it’s official. The anchored putting stoke will become a thing of the past come 2016, thanks to Tuesday’s definitive announcement by the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club (R&A), otherwise known as golf’s “Powers That Be”.

As has been the sign of our times, sports fans immediately took their reaction to Twitter to share with the world in typical candid fashion. Here are a few gems you may have missed:

The USGA and R&A announced Tuesday that, as of Jan. 1, 2016, the anchored putting stroke favored by major champions Adam Scott, Keegan Bradley, Webb Simpson, and Ernie Els will be prohibited.

“The R&A and USGA announce final approval for Rule 14-b that prohibits the use of anchored strokes,” the R&A website announced early Tuesday morning.

Tiger Woods, with golf’s governing bodies expected on Tuesday to announce they will outlaw the anchored putting stroke, asked the PGA Tour to enact an immediate ban on the way four of the last six major champions wield their long flat sticks.

“Well, I hope they [the USGA and R&A] go with the ban,” Woods told reporters Monday during media day for next month’s AT&T National at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md. “As far as the PGA Tour, I hope they do it as soon as possible to be honest with you. I’ve always said that.”

Padraig Harrington may want to consider renewing his long-time opposition to long putters, after his maiden voyage with an anchored stroke in competition left him dead flat last in Thursday’s opening round of the Wells Fargo Championship.

Harrington this week joined the ranks of Ernie Els and James Driscoll as PGA Tour golfers who were against anchoring until they shoved belly bats into their own guts. Nine bogeys, 32 putts, and an 8-over tally later, and the noted Irish golf club tinkerer may be toying with another solution to one that he said, not even 12 months ago, should be outlawed.

PGA of America president Ted Bishop won’t kowtow to R&A chief Peter Dawson on anchoring, Dawson’s male-only policies, or any other issue.

Just about a week after Dawson pontificated that he would not “bully” Muirfield (the all-old-boys club that’s the site of this year’s British Open) into accepting women members, Bishop let the fusty old sexist, who has women-proofed his own association, know that he would stand firm against similar tactics from across the pond. Bishop told Golf Digest’s Tim Rosaforte in an interview and via email that he found Dawson’s unwillingness to accept women members, and thereby grow the game, “very curious and perplexing.

Ernie Els was going to shelve his belly putter after last week’s Masters. Instead, the guy who finished third at Augusta in putts per hole (1.53, according to Jonathan Wall), will continue his anchoring odyssey for the foreseeable future.

“I think I was No. 1 in putting last week,” Els told reporters Wednesday, on the eve of the RBC Heritage. “I really worked with Sherylle [Calder], my putting lady, and she got the message across what she wanted me to do and I really started feeling it. I was going to go with the shorter version this week, but I putted so nicely with it last week, I’m going to keep going with the belly.”

Adam Scott may be the last golfer with an anchored putter ever to win a major championship.

The new face of long putters, Scott won the 2013 Masters -- the first major victory for him and for an Australian at Augusta -- with the longest of flat sticks jammed into his chest and became the fourth of the last six major champions to wield a big bat.

Ernie Els sees the handwriting on the wall, and while he’ll use a putter of conventional length in his final Masters tune-up, the four-time major champ who was anti-belly putter before becoming an evangelist for the other side will jam a big bat into his gut at Augusta.

Meanwhile, taking time out from the PGA Tour-sanctioned Laughingstock Travesty Cup in Orlando, Adam Scott and Tim Clark renewed their campaigns for the USGA and R&A to shock the golf world by letting them continue clamping their long wands to various parts of their bodies.

Ernie Els took one for the team Tuesday when he claimed his major championship victory with a flat stick affixed to his belly was the reason golf’s rules-makers decided to ban anchored putting strokes. The reigning British Open titleholder, however, may be switching sides as early as Thursday if he decides to revert to a conventional flat stick.

“Yeah, you just might see it soon,” Els told Golf Digest’s Dave Shedloski about the possibility of adding an Odyssey Black #1 to his bag for this week’s WGC-Cadillac Championship.

Calling its proposed ban on the anchored putting stroke “particularly sensitive” in the United States and a “polarizing” issue overall, the Royal & Ancient said Friday it would consider carefully the responses it has received before enacting a rule change.

With the European Tour and Ladies European Tour backing the proposal announced in November by the R&A and its U.S. counterpart, the USGA, and the PGA Tour opposing it, the American regulatory association faces a tougher task in its push to outlaw the way three of the last five major championship winners use their long putters.

Tiger Woods, despite recent comments that appeared to soften his stance, remains a staunch opponent of the anchored-putting stroke.

”My position hasn’t changed,” Woods told reporters on Wednesday after the pro-am tourney prior to this week’s Honda Classic. “I still think it should be swung, it shouldn’t be anchored and that hasn’t changed at all.”

Rory McIlroy, saying he kinda, sorta agreed with the proposed ban on anchored putting but also believed the USGA and R&A’s plan was a “knee-jerk reaction” to the successes of Keegan Bradley and other belly putter users, has issued a plea for unity on the whole shebang.

Meanwhile, Bradley -- the first golfer to win a major title with a flat stick shoved into his gut -- just wants the noise to stop. And for the love of all that is sacred in the game of golf, stop labeling the 2011 PGA champ a miscreant.

Colin Montgomerie sounded the alarm Sunday night when he warned that the PGA Tour’s stance against the proposed ban on anchored putting could threaten the game of golf.

”Very dangerous, very dangerous situation we are getting ourselves into,” Monty said on Sky Sports after commissioner Tim Finchem announced his circuit’s anti-ban bias during the final round of his tour’s WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. “I do hope they can sort this out very, very quickly.”

Commissioner Tim Finchem challenged golf’s governing bodies to prove whether he or USGA executive director Mike Davis sported the longer, er, putter, when he announced Sunday that the PGA Tour was against the proposed ban on the anchored stroke.

Finchem completely overshadowed his own match play finale when he appeared on Golf Channel and NBC to state his opposition to the USGA and R&A’s plan to outlaw the way three of the last five major champions maneuvered their long putters. While declining to predict how the issue would eventually play out, Finchem made it pretty clear that he was willing to enact a separate rule for the tour if the USGA failed to come around to his way of thinking.

In an extraordinary upstaging of his own event playing out on another network, commissioner Tim Finchem appeared on Golf Channel Sunday afternoon to declare the PGA Tour’s opposition to the USGA’s proposed ban on anchored putting.

PGA Tour members “did not think that banning anchoring was in the best interests of golf or the PGA Tour,” Finchem said in a press conference as NBC aired the final round of the WGC-Match Play Championship.

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy will be nowhere to be seen when the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship wraps up Sunday, so with his two cash cows grazing elsewhere, PGA Tour commission Tim Finchem had to do something spectacular to keep golf fans glued to their TV screens.

To that end, the commish will announce during his regularly scheduled chat with NBC sometime after 2 p.m. ET that the tour opposes the USGA and R&A’s proposed ban on anchored putting, according to Michael Bamberger. Finchem will reportedly make his remarks after hearing last week from the Players Advisory Council and the Tour Policy Board that his golfers want nothing to do with the prohibition, which golf governing boards proposed to enact in 2016.

Tiger Woods, in the wake of an all-hands-on-deck meeting of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council on Monday, seemed to ease up on his previous strong support for a ban on the anchored putting stroke.

The world No. 2, speaking with the press ahead of Wednesday’s first round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, did not come out in favor of a putting method that makes traditionalists gag on their persimmon drivers. But he was not as strident as he has been in the past when the issue arose.

The PGA Tour may decide as early as Monday to encourage the USGA and R&A to take back their proposal to ban anchored putting, according to Brad Faxon.

Commissioner Tim Finchem will convene a 5 p.m. ET conference call of the tour’s policy board to determine an official response to golf governing bodies’ bid to outlaw the stroke Keegan Bradley and several others use with their long putters, Faxon said in a first-person “special” column Sunday for Golf.com.