Tiger On Belly Putters

One Response to “Tiger On Belly Putters”

1. Dan Clark on February 9th, 2012 9:39 am
   

   Let us end this Belly Putter mania once and for all shall we?

   Golf is a game that has been evolving over the centuries with nary a batted eye at the advances until this silly subject came up. Would any of this debate have occurred had not Keegan Bradley won the PGA Championship and Webb Simpson had such an extraordinary year? I think not!

   Putting woes have existed for as long as the game and we golfers are always looking for ways to overcome these problems. The “Yips” have ended or at least limited the careers of many great players, including Tommy Armour (The Silver Scot), who actually coined the word “Yips” when referring to his problem. Others who have been affected include Ben Hogan, George Knudson and likely the two most famous, Sam Snead and Bernhard Langer.

   Sam Snead in the mid 60’s was ready to end his remarkable career because of his putting problems, but being the ultimate innovator, he worked at a method that helped him while not breaking any current rule, that being the croquet style where he straddled the line of the intended putt. This resurrected his career and during that period he won the Greater Greensboro Open for the 8th time, 2 Senior PGA Championships and 2 West Virginia Open Championships among others.

   Sadly for Sam, The USGA in its myopic wisdom amended Rule 16-1 to prohibit straddling the line of the intended putt, because as they said, “it simply didn’t look right.” Sam again innovated and adopted the “side saddle” method with great success, which he used until the very end.

   Bernhard Langer was afflicted with the Yips at an unusually young age and utilized various methods to overcome the situation. These met with mixed results, but did include two Masters wins before he employed the Broomstick putter which he uses to this day and he is arguably the most successful Senior player of his time.

   Are these methods outside of convention? Of course. Do they contravene the Rules of Golf? No more than “Left Hand Low” or “The Claw” grip, and in fact the belly putter; methods that are widely used by players of all skill levels. While these methods are outside of the norm, they do not provide any scientifically proven distinct advantage other than the “perceived” advantage to the individual using them.

   I can best cite an example of this with my own situation. I was cursed by the Yips in my late 30’s and was in such a state that I was seriously considering giving up competitive play if I couldn’t resolve the issue. For a Golf Professional, this is not a good thing!

   I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a long putter (Broomstick), which paid immediate dividends, with a couple of tournament wins. Over the past 15 years I have won 7 major championships within the Ontario PGA, have been Player of the Year and have won both the Hunt Trophy and Senior Hunt Trophy as Order of Merit winner on numerous occasions.

   In my mind, none of this would have been possible without the benefit of the long putter. Having said that though, I have also experienced bad times with the long putter. While these problems were not the Yips, they displayed many of the same symptoms.

   When this occurred, I actually switched to the belly putter in 2006. With the belly, I had some moderate short term success, but actually ended up with the yips again before I discarded it at the end of 2006. This was a moment of great reflection for me in that I felt that I had hit the end of the line with my options. This was supposed to prevent the yips!!

   Beginning in 2007, I restored my love affair with the long putter and have stuck with it for the most part since, but I continue to experiment. In fact this past summer, I felt that since you use your putter for up to half of the shots in a round, why would you limit yourself to one club for all of those shots? We carry up to 4 wedges in our bag and may only hit 9 or 10 wedge shots in a round, so why not carry a second putter and become a situational putter?

   The difficulty with this method is establishing the line inside or outside of which you use one putter over the other. This can become confusing, but if you are committed to the concept, hard work will ultimately prevail and define those parameters for you. I had neither the patience nor the inclination to continue this quest, so I reverted back to my long putter at the end of the season, and enjoyed some of my finest putting rounds in years.

   The bottom line here is that the tools of the trade do not provide any distinct advantage, but rather it is the mindset of the player that determines the success of any particular method. Overcoming a physiological disorder like the “Yips”, sometimes diagnosed as “Focal Dystonia” (the same neurological disorder that causes “Writer’s Cramp”) is not something that a different putter will cure… it will simply make it more enjoyable to play with potentially better results.

   Banning the belly putter or the long putter at the grass roots level of golf is an absurd notion that has no basis in scientific fact, and if it does have any scientific basis in fact, I have no doubt that I could find a scientist who will testify to the opposite and provide evidence to support that position, (although it is difficult to prove a negative).

   Let’s enjoy it and consider the game to be evolving one more time, just as it did with the golf ball, the hickory to steel to graphite shaft and the continuing improved playing conditions that we all enjoy every time we play our wonderful game. We are trying to grow the game, not stifle it!!!

   I think that Messrs. Dawson and Davis, not to mention Tiger, should get their heads out of the sand and view the landscape of our stagnating game!

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