For three weeks during the PGA’s Florida swing last month, Adam Scott looked a little strange on the greens. That long, chest-high putter that has served him so well these past few years was nowhere to be found. Instead, it was replaced with a standard-length putter, which Scott began using with a claw-like grip at the World Golf Cadillac Championship in early March.
But as he returned this week to Augusta National Golf Club and his greatest golf accomplishment to date, Scott is back to his old tricks. The 2013 Masters champion broke out his long putter.
“I’m not really sold on anything,” Scott said after his practice round Tuesday morning. “But when you go out to play, I’ve got to convince myself that it’s the right way. So no matter what I show up with, I’m going to say, ‘this is the way to go.’”
Scott is one of several world-class golfers stuck between bent-grass and a hard place. There’s some new ground rules regarding putting. Starting Jan. 1, 2016, the “anchored stroke” will be outlawed.
In 2013, the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal and Ancient (R&A), golf’s two governing bodies, jointly decided that any method in which a club is secured against the body to stabilize a swing should be eliminated. The change happened to come at a time when Scott’s game was soaring.
Scott went to the long putter to cure his putting woes in 2011. He became the No. 1-ranked player in the world a year later and made two of the most impressive putts in modern Masters history after that.
In 2013, he made a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole that got him into a playoff with Angel Cabrera, then sank a 12-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole to become the first Australian to win a green jacket.
Scott knows he’ll eventually have to give up his long stick. He gave himself a sneak preview in early March, and the initial results weren’t bad. He shot 4 under over four days at Doral during the Cadillac World Championships. But then he missed the cut the next week at Valspar. He shot 6 under, but finished T35 with a short putter at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Understandably, Scott chose to return to a place of comfort and confidence this week. And he said the transition back has been seamless.
“It’s very, very easy; it’s what I’ve been doing for four years,” Scott said. “I just switched up for three weeks, and so to go back was a piece of cake. And really two days’ practice with it, and I felt like I was at the levels I was at last year, which are very high, and that was the reason for it.”
Scott’s not the only one in various stages of transition. Keegan Bradley has permanently switched from long to short putter. So has Savannah’s Brian Harman. Webb Simpson actually broke his long putter over his knee in November so he wouldn’t be tempted to use it again.
“I kept thinking in my head, just go one more year with the belly putter, you’ve had a great last four years,” Simpson told reporters at the Sony Open in Hawaii in January. “So I felt myself kind of backing out and I tried to justify it with, you know, all these things. So in front of my wife, I snapped it over my knee.”
Meanwhile, former Masters champions Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer, now full-timers on the Champions tour, continue to utilize their anchored strokes. And South African Tim Clark, who didn’t make the Masters field this year, probably is the most adamant against the ban of long putters.
Clark has a medical condition affecting the wrists and ligaments in his arms that make the traditional form of putting extraordinarily difficult for him. But even he is easing his resistance.
“I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it,” Clark said earlier this year. “I’m not as concerned as I was maybe at the start of last year because I think I’ve figured something out now and I’ll be fine. But I’m not going to spend my time practicing it now while I’m trying to play tournaments this year with what I’ve used. Once they tell me it’s done, then it’s done. Then it will be easier to change.”
For Scott, at least, he wasn’t about to take any chances at Augusta.
“I’m coming to a major,” he said. “I’m not here to throw the balls up in the air and see where they fall. I want to make sure I give myself the best chance to perform at the highest level I need to win. Basically, that will be with the longer putter because I’ve done more practice with it.”
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