Just Golf

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At Masters, a Swan Song for Long Putters
By KAREN CROUSE
AUGUSTA, Ga.

The 10-foot putt dropped, and Adam Scott’s star ascended. Nine years before a 10-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole won him the Masters, Scott drained a putt from the same distance at the Players Championship to become, at 23, the youngest winner of the event, prompting the golf analyst Johnny Miller to say, “This might be another Tiger Woods in the making.”

Scott’s 2004 victory at T.P.C. Sawgrass was heralded as the changing of the guard in Australian golf, with Greg Norman, the Arnold Palmer of Down Under, passing the baton to Scott, a Queenslander with a swing purer than a mountain spring. Butch Harmon declared that Scott had a better swing than Woods and was “on the verge of breaking out.”

The bookmakers agreed, installing Scott as one of the favorites at the Masters, which followed the Players Championship that year. Scott posted rounds of 84 and 79 at Augusta National Golf Club, missing the cut. Between his breakthrough at the Players Championship and the end of last year, Scott won six tour events, including the 2006 Tour Championship and the 2011 World Golf Championship-Bridgestone Invitational. He built a handsome résumé, but it did not do justice to the beauty of his swing.

The problem was Norman did not pass Scott his putter, which Norman wielded with deadly efficiency in his heyday. Scott’s inexorable march to superstardom became a decade-long slog through greens that swallowed him like quicksand. In 2010, the year before Scott switched to the long putter that he anchors to his chest, he ranked 186th on the PGA Tour in putting, in a relatively new advanced statistic, strokes gained-putting.

The long putter did not look like a miracle cure last July at the British Open, where Scott had a four-shot lead, then played the last four holes in four over. On Sunday he became an overnight success 10 years in the making with birdies on three of the last six holes of regulation and a birdie on the second hole of sudden death to beat Ángel Cabrera.

Scott, 32, is the first Masters winner and the fourth winner in the last six majors to use an anchored putting stroke. His victory surely is the last nail in the anchored stroke’s coffin, never mind that at this year’s spring golf festival at Augusta National, the long putter was the maypole around which spun many of the best stories.

Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer, both green jacket owners and stars on the 50-and-older Champions Tour, played their way onto the first page of the leader board early Sunday using long putters. They ran out of magic on the back nine but not before infusing the tournament with a double shot of nostalgia.

Guan Tianlang, the 14-year-old from China, used a belly putter on his way to becoming the only amateur to make the cut.

Then there was Scott, whose graciousness after his British Open collapse won him more fans than any claret jug possibly could. Last summer he spoke as if it were better to have led and lost than never to have led at all. He vowed to build on the experience of having put himself in a position to win, leading those with less sunny dispositions to wonder if he was sincere or simply in shock.

“Everything I said after the Open is how I felt, and I meant it,” Scott said Sunday night. “It did give me more belief that I could win a major. It proved to me, in fact, that I could.”

Scott, who was introduced to the game at a young age by his father, Phil, a club pro, has the kind of genial personality that makes him everybody’s favorite practice round partner or pub companion. At Scott’s postround news conference, journalists from all over the world greeted him with a round of applause more enthusiastic than what followed the announcement in the press room that alcoholic beverages were available in the dining area.

On Twitter, the PGA Tour player Brad Faxon wrote, “Has to be as popular a player to win in awhile.”

Perhaps not with officials of the United States Golf Association and the R&A, the rule-making bodies that have proposed a ban on the anchored putting stroke. Their final decision on the issue is expected soon, which leads to the question: now that Scott finally has a major victory to celebrate, are the rulers of golf going to break up his party?

“We are all waiting to hear what’s going to happen,” Scott said.

Referring to his victory, he said, “I don’t know that this is going to impact any decisions at all.”

It was inevitable, he added, that players using anchored strokes would leave their marks on the majors.

“Because you know, these are the best players in the world,” Scott said, “and they practice thousands of hours. They are going to get good with whatever they are using.”

For Scott, it may not be the end of the world if the anchored stroke is banned. He will adapt and endure, the way he always has. Besides, it is not as if he has never performed well using a conventional flat stick. The year he won the Players Championship, Scott finished No. 1 on tour in putting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/sports/golf/at-masters-a-death-knell-for-long-putters.html?ref=golf&_r=0&pagewanted=print