Tiger Woods is Right: Ban Anchoring Sooner

 Ryan Ballengee May 21, 2013 5:59 PM

COMMENTARY | Why wait? Two-and-a-half years is a long time for anchoring to continue to be legal under the Rules of Golf.



Tiger Woods has a solution: enact as soon as possible the ban that was formally announced Tuesday, rather than waiting until Jan. 1, 2016 for it to take effect.



"Anchoring should not be a part of the game," Woods said Monday at Congressional C.C., site of his AT&T National, played June 27-30. "I've always felt that in golf you should have to control your nerves and swing all 14 c


lubs, not just 13. And as far as the PGA Tour, I hope they do it as soon as possible to be honest with you."



He's not entirely right, but he's close. The ban of the anchored stroke -- which will fall under Rule 14-1b in the next edition of the Rules of Golf -- should begin two years sooner, at the start of 2014.



Like the timetable to implement new grooves specifications that were announced in 2008, pros should have to deal with them first, then high amateurs, then the bulk of the 26 million Americans that play golf.



Pros had to start using clubs with grooves that jived with the new rule at the beginning of 2010. High amateurs will have to convert next year. The rest of us? We have until 2024 to swap out our sticks. That's a 14-year difference between pros and everyone else.



The ban should start Jan. 1, 2014, but only for professionals. It should start earlier for the simple reason that the likes of Keegan Bradley, Webb Simpson and other players that anchor their putter now will be subject to fan heckling for another 30 months. That's far too long for guys who have done nothing wrong under the current Rules of Golf to be looked at as cheaters for something that isn't even illegal yet.



Bradley already had to deal with an unruly fan. Days after the proposed ban was announced, a fan yelled "Cheater!" at the 2011 PGA champion while playing in Tiger Woods' World Challenge event in California. The USGA had to issue a statement condemning the fan -- a messy situation.



Starting the ban next year would be as close as it will get to good timing for the guys on the PGA Tour, as the schedule will go to a wrap-around calendar after this season. In essence, accumulating FedEx Cup points will never end. Every tournament will offer them. The Tour's brief Asia swing will now offer big money that counts toward the money list. A player can fall behind very quickly when the year never ends. Bumping up the ban forces players to make a conversion they may hold off in doing until four months into the 2015-2016 season.



PGA Tour veteran Bob Estes suggested to me last November that the success rate of adopting the anchored stroke is already low because there's little time for his struggling peers to learn over several months without putting their livelihood in jeopardy. The same would likely be true going back to a traditional stroke.



There will be no perfect time for the pros to have to switch, but if everyone is forced to do it at the end of this calendar year, there are no holdovers or stubborn stalwarts that could be accused of clinging to their advantage longer than anyone else on the PGA Tour.



Bumping up the ban impacts a couple-thousand players worldwide. The USGA said Tuesday that just about 2 percent of recreational golfers anchor the putter. Of 26 million American golfers, then, just about 300,000 anchor. They're sparse. Why not let this dinosaur of a stroke, then, die quietly over a long span?



Give amateurs until 2030, or some other outrageous date in the distant future, to ditch the anchored stroke. Players who have leaned on the anchored stroke -- literally -- to keep enjoying the game without back problems will have two more decades to do just that.



Meanwhile, most young kids that may have taken up the anchored stroke early, akin to what 14-year-old Chinese amateur Guan Tianlang did, will have ample time to change how they putt before they get to the collegiate or professional level.



A select group of teens would fall through the cracks. Current college recruits that anchor the putter, though they are rare, might have their futures negatively impacted by the proposed, drawn-out adoption time frame. Coaches will be uncertain if these otherwise brilliant talents will be able to make a successful swap to a traditional stroke. That impacts players that are not only on the doorstep of college, but for three more classes.



Ending the practice of anchoring for players that could someday go on to join the paid ranks of professional golf would help remove any doubt college golf programs might have in making an investment in developing an up-and-coming kid who just so happens to anchor the putter.



Why put off until tomorrow what can be done today? It's a great outlook for life and one that applies to the anchoring ban. Do it now. Rip off anchoring like the Band-Aid that it is for so many and let the game move on to other critical issues, like mediating a truce between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia. Or maybe slow play, how far the golf ball travels and developing a more robust drug-testing program.



Ryan Ballengee is a Washington, D.C.-based golf writer. His work has appeared on multiple digital outlets, including NBC Sports and Golf Channel. Follow him on Twitter @RyanBallengee.

Long view on anchor putter: It works

Derek Harper, The Sports Xchange May 21, 2013 6:10 PMThe SportsXchange



As I stood over a 10-foot birdie putt at my local golf course last weekend, I felt an uncomfortable but remarkably familiar emotion flow through my body.

Fear.

I'd been here before - playing for bragging rights in a men's club tournament with a group of good friends. And history was not on my side. Nor was the current state of my mind.

As the putt slid by the left edge, I knew I'd left myself a little left-breaking downhill putt. It's one I make 99 out of 100 times on the range and don't think twice about it. But with something on the line I cared about, I let my right wrist break and pushed the putt to the left.

And the three-footer coming back.

When I left a five-footer short on the next hole, one of my buddies shook his head and simply said, "You are so inside your own head right now."

And that is the very heart of the sensitive chord struck with Tuesday's announcement by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club and the U.S. Golf Association to outlaw the use of anchoring long putters to the body beginning in 2016.

I'm what you might call a driving range all-star. I can win side games and look like a scratch golfer with 100 balls and meaningless targets in front of me. Good balance and solid mechanics from 30-plus years of playing the game.

However, hundreds of rounds have also built a deep reservoir of terrible shots that my memory can recall like Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind." It typically rears its ugly head on the putting green, where shaky hands can make a six-inch tap-in feel like a daunting task.


That's why I immediately jumped staunchly in the corner of Tiger Woods, Brandt Snedeker and Steve Stricker when they came out in favor of banning the use of anchored putting strokes. I'm in full agreement it takes away from the intent to have a "free swing," where nerves must be managed every bit as much as mechanics.

Tim Clark can give all the impassioned speeches he wants about how anchoring the putter goes back decades, or even longer. There's a reason why he and Carl Pettersson have used anchored putters since joining the PGA Tour.

As Snedeker said last November, "It works."

Adam Scott has one of the best pure swings you'll ever see, but his inability to hit clutch putts always held the Aussie back from joining the world's elite golfers. When he switched to an anchor-based putter, Scott became far more consistent and nearly won the British Open last year before breaking through at The Masters last month.

Ernie Els won that British Open over Scott, using a belly putter to help fix the putting woes he has encountered as he slowly leaves his prime. I've often wondered if we'd even know Keegan Bradley or Webb Simpson -- two more major champions --without their mastery of long putters shoved into their chests or bellies.

Would the golf world be a less entertaining place without those figures? Hardly.

We'd simply have more dramatic stories to rehash along the lines of Retief Goosen nearly choking away the 2001 U.S. Open with a missed two-footer on the 72nd hole, or I.K. Kim's heartbreaking loss at the LPGA's Kraft Nabisco Championship last year when she missed a one-foot putt on the final hole of regulation.

Overcoming nerves with a pure swing of the flat stick speaks to the beauty of the sport.

Truth be told, if I wasn't so stubborn to fix my own flaws and had the patience to revamp a major part of my game, I'd have no hesitation in using an anchored putter if it took my "yips" and gave them a proper burial at sea.

And there's the rub. The USGA ruling will outlaw anchoring a putter to your body for all amateurs. The PGA Tour, however, is considering whether it will follow suit and likewise institute the rule for its professionals.

Translation: Come 2016, I won't be allowed to solve my yips through the use of an anchored putter, but Scott could still be hoisting major tournament trophies without having to test the strength of his nerves through the most minute movements in his hands and wrists.

That's where the entire issue has taken a duck hook into the forest.

I could care less if the champion at my local muni earned his bragging rights after elevating his game with a putter shoved into his belly. It's far more important that millions of amateur golfers every year are enjoying the game -- or returning to it -- because a long putter has made the sport ... gasp ... more fun.

I do care that the best golfers in the world who literally have millions of dollars riding on every putt, are put to the test in the truest sense of the word. You can show me a picture of a golfer from 60 years ago with an anchored putter, but it's not going to change the equation when it comes to the debate the PGA Tour continued to fail to put to rest Tuesday when it said it will review its plans come 2016. All Commissioner Tim Finchem needs to listen to is two words.

It works.

Sergio Garcia crossed line with 'fried chicken' comment about Tiger Woods

 Ryan Ballengee May 21, 2013 9:44 PM








COMMENTARY | Sergio Garcia crossed a line on Monday he never should have toed.



At the European Tour's annual gala dinner ahead of its flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship in England, Garcia responded to a question asking if he would have dinner with Tiger Woods at next month's U.S. Open at Merion.





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Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia shake hands at TPC Sawgrass. (AP)


His reply, according to The Guardian: "We will have him round every night. We will serve fried chicken."



The comment can only be construed as racially charged, particularly if one harkens back to remarks made byFuzzy Zoeller in 1997 after Tiger Woods won the Masters. Zoeller, the 1979 Masters winner, was asked about Woods' record-setting performance and injected several racial undertones -- and some overtones -- into his response.



"That little boy is driving well and he's putting well," Zoeller said. "He's doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it? ... or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve."



That comment haunts Zoeller to this day. It's one he regrets. He should.



Garcia will likely regret these comments. They are inappropriate and uncalled for under any circumstance. They're not justified. It's not merely an escalation in the exchange or verbal barbs traded by Garcia and Woods after an incident of etiquette that unfolded during their third-round pairing in The Players Championship.



Woods may have fudged the timing of events on the par-5 second hole. He may have said it was not surprising Garcia was whining. Again, none of that merited what Garcia said.



The Spaniard issued a statement through the European Tour on Tuesday, apologizing for his remarks.



"I apologize for any offense that may have been caused by my comment on stage during the European Tour Players' Awards dinner," Garcia said. "I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner."



That's not an unequivocal, unmistakable apology. Saying "Sorry if I offended you" is merely a way of apologizing for being caught.



Garcia's been caught doing and saying a number of things people haven't liked the 14 years he has been in the spotlight. Most times, however, Garcia has come across as self-wallowing and lamenting. He believes the golf gods are against him, that he's just playing for second place in the majors. Those kinds of things really only impact Garcia and the possibility of one day reaching his full potential as a player.



He spit in a cup at Doral in 2007 at the WGC-Cadillac Championship, venting -- literally -- after a three-putt bogey at a par 3. Questioned about it on television, Garcia stumbled to provide an explanation for the inexplicable, much less a wholehearted apology.





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Tiger Woods raises The Players championship trophy. (AP)


"I just missed that [par] putt and wasn't too happy," Garcia told NBC Sports at the time. "But it (the spit) did go in the middle (of the hole) and wasn't going to affect anyone else. If it did, I would have wiped it off."



That sounds an awful lot like his apology for what he said in reference to Woods on Monday night. Garcia essentially said, "Yup, I did it, and if anyone made a stink about it, then I would have apologized."



The 33-year-old could have said any other kind of food. Snowballs would have been clean and funny as a reference to Woods' girlfriend Lindsey Vonn. He could've gone with Swedish meatballs as a more edgy shot across the bow about Woods' defunct marriage to Elin Nordegren. How about a Hank Haney reference and say "popsicles"? Garcia chose to allude to fried chicken.



The ramifications for Garcia going forward depend on how he is viewed in the court of public opinion. He deserves to be skewered for saying something so insensitive.



The last guy that made a racial comment about Woods was the guy's former caddie, Steve Williams. A little more than a month after Woods fired him, the Kiwi put on an over-exuberant celebration following current man Adam Scott's win in the 2011 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. At a function in China months later, Williams said the point of the jubilant display was to "shove it up that black arse----."



Williams is not nearly as visible as he was when with the world No. 1, but the comment didn't drive him out of the game. Hardly. Woods had no say in the broader reaction to what Williams said and will be unlikely to make much public acknowledgement of what Garcia said on Monday night.



Woods, however, got the latest laugh at Garcia when he hoisted The Players crystal trophy at TPC Sawgrass. Given how things have unfolded competitively between the two over the course of their careers, the laugh was not Woods' last.



Ryan Ballengee is a Washington, D.C.-based golf writer. His work has appeared on multiple digital outlets, including NBC Sports and Golf Channel. Follow him on Twitter @RyanBallengee.