Keegan Bradley drops anchored putting at Hero World Challenge

Keegan Bradley will display a different look on the greens at this week’s Hero World Challenge -- and likely from now on -- as the 2011 PGA champion will not be tethering his flat stick to his belly.

The first golfer to win a major with an anchored putting stroke, which will be banned as of January 2016, Bradley has been tinkering with a technique that keeps the grip away from his body. He believes his beloved 46.5-inch White Hot XG Sabertooth may have made its last official appearance.

“I’m ready to make the change for this week, for sure,” Bradley told Golf Channel on Wednesday, ahead of his 11:45 a.m. Thursday start at Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge. “I’m just kind of in an experimental stage right now, but this putter feels really good.”

The three-time PGA Tour winner said he planned to use a standard-length club next year, but that he would “take it as I go.”

Bradley said the looming anchored-stroke deadline factored into his decision to drop anchor.

“It’s always in the back of your mind that this is coming,” he said. “Just kind of want to get ahead of it as much as I can.”

His success on the greens -- or lack thereof -- played a larger role in his determination to make the adjustment now.

“I felt like this past year was my worst putting year I’ve had since I got out here,” said Bradley, who has dropped from 29th on tour in strokes gained-putting in 2012 -- the last year he won a tour event -- to 47th in 2014.

Coincidentally, it was two years ago at Woods’ tourney -- less than a month after the USGA and R&A proposed to ban the stroke of choice of Bradley, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson, and Ernie Els, among others -- that a spectator accused Bradley of cheating. Indeed, Bradley said one of the biggest challenges he faced was mental rather than trying to get used to the different physical aspects of his putting change.

“I still feel like I got eyeballs on me,” Bradley said. “They’re waiting for me to miss a short putt, or do something, but I’ve got to get over that.”

This week will not be the first time Bradley has put an unanchored putter into play. He used a 41-inch Sabertooth model at the 2014 Memorial, where he went on an early birdie binge but finished tied for 37th.

Bradley returned to the belly putter in his next start, at the U.S. Open, and ended up T4 -- one of five top-10s he recorded last year.

And while Scott has contended he won’t stop whisking a broomstick putter until he absolutely has to (though the 2013 Masters champ recently swapped a Scotty Cameron Futura X for a PING IN Series 1/2 Wack-E L for more stability, according to Jonathan Wall), Simpson has joined Bradley in preparing for 2016.

Simpson ditched his PING G5i Craz-E belly putter that he had used since 2004 for a standard-length Odyssey White Hot Pro V-Line at last month’s Dunlop Phoenix Open in Japan, Wall reported. Things did not go so well for the winner of the 2012 U.S. Open, however, as he finished tied for 61st in putting average, according to GolfMagic, on his way to a T55 finish.

Wielding his counterbalanced shorter putter, Bradley tied for 64th at November’s WGC-HSBC Champions, but he remained undeterred in his quest to master the belly putter before next year’s first major.

“I’m really looking forward to having it at Augusta,” he said. “Longer putts are 100 percent easier [with a shorter putter].”