Long Putters? How About Slow Play, Drugs and Phrankenwoods?
By KAREN CROUSE
The governing bodies of golf have spoken about anchored putting. Hopefully, they were just clearing their throats.
The announcement Tuesday that, beginning in 2016, anchoring a putter against the body would be banned ought to be the start of a thorough spring cleaning by the sport. If the United States Golf Association and the Royal & Ancient needed only 174 days of debate before officially outlawing a stroke that has been in play for at least five decades and is used by roughly 15 percent of PGA Tour members, it should have no problem acting swiftly to address more pressing issues.
Among them: performance-enhancing equipment used by 100 percent of touring pros; caddies lining up their players on putts; the slow pace of play; the viewer call-ins that are threatening to turn tournament golf into a good walk spoiled by armchair rules officials; and an antidoping program that is not up to the Olympic model.
It sounds like a golfer’s utopia, where a 3-wood shot travels farther than a driver, golf balls that don’t cut or curve, and utility clubs designed to help shots out of the rough brake on the greens. But not everybody is thrilled with the era ushered in by technology.
Adam Scott, who won the Masters putting with an anchored stroke, has said: “I don’t think putting is the biggest problem in the game at the moment. It’s commonly acknowledged that length is more of an issue than anything else. The holes haven’t been made smaller or the greens changed because of people putting with longer putters, yet tees are moving a long way back and courses are made obsolete because of other technologies in the game.”
Take the utility club — please, said the PGA Tour veteran Steve Stricker.
“When you had to sit back there and hit a 2-iron or a 3-iron over 200 yards and try to get it to stop on a green, before those utility clubs came out, that was a tough challenge,” he said. “I think that’s been a huge change in our game and I think one of the factors that has enabled us to shoot lower scores and get the ball to stop quicker on some of those long approach shots.”
Why does the U.S.G.A. bother growing rough that looks like Bart Simpson’s hair if it is going to allow clubs designed to cut through it like a scythe?
Stacy Lewis, the L.P.G.A.’s reigning player of the year, said she would not take part in a United States Women’s Open without her utility club because “it’s certainly easier out of the rough.” The hybrid that poses the greatest threat to the game, in her opinion, is the club called the Phrankenwood. Phil Mickelson has described it as “a 3-wood on steroids.”
“When you talk about something that’s an advantage to those who are using it, how about the 3-woods right now that people can use to hit farther than their drivers?” Lewis said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
Lewis said she did not agree with the ban on the anchored stroke in putting. She would have preferred that the ruling bodies address the habit of caddies lining up their players on the greens.
“To me, lining up properly is an essential part of the game,” Lewis said. “You have kids growing up who are not learning how to line themselves up properly.”
The 14-year-old amateur Guan Tianlang’s slow-play penalty at the Masters brought to the fore another issue plaguing golf at every level.
“The fact that he is looking at tour players playing every week like snails means that he plays the same way,” Shane Lowry, who competes primarily on the European Tour, said in a Twitter message.
On Tuesday, Mike Davis, the U.S.G.A. president, acknowledged the influence of a couple of hundred PGA Tour pros on the millions of other golfers. “As we like to say, when white belts appeared on the PGA Tour, guess what: they appeared in recreational golf,” Davis said.
So if the PGA Tour were to penalize slow play more, it stands to reason that recreational play would speed up.
The U.S.G.A. could start with its signature event. At last year’s United States Open at Olympic Club, Jim Furyk was placed on the clock during the final round while holding the lead, and others were warned that they had fallen out of position. But no penalties were assessed. Despite rounds last year that exceeded five hours, the last slow-play penalty meted out at a United States Open was to Edward Fryatt in 1997.
The pace of play does not figure to be helped by the recent spate of call-ins from viewers pointing out rules violations during telecasts. Tiger Woods came under such scrutiny at the Masters and the Players Championship. During Sunday’s final round of the Byron Nelson Championship, Sang-Moon Bae, perhaps mindful of the extra eyes on him, asked for an official ruling on a drop after hitting into the water while holding the lead.
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said before the Players that the U.S.G.A. and the R&A were discussing the issue of viewers calling in to enforce rules, with an eye toward simplifying the rule book, which will become more complicated when the anchoring ban becomes official.
“Maybe systematizing the rules in certain areas that make it more realistic,” Finchem said, adding, “If you compare some of the penalties in our sport to what happens in other sports, it’s kind of crazy.”
If you compare golf’s drug-testing policy to the policies in other sports, it also sticks out. With few exceptions, golfers are tested only during tournament weeks, and only urine samples are collected.
“If you really want to be serious about it, and find out what’s really going on, we need to do blood testing,” the two-time major winner Greg Norman recently told The Australian newspaper. “I think it’s disgraceful, to tell you the truth. The golf associations have to get together and step it up.”
With the anchored putting stroke issue off their plates, the game’s ruling bodies can devote time to these issues. But do they have the appetite?
