Oh dear, things are going to get messy now… www1.skysports.com/golf/news/122 … ly-putters
Finchem is also against penalizing players for slow play. He seems to not like upsetting the players.
I am against banning the long putter. I only say this because I am against the USGA making all these radical changes to the game as they so please. I would have been against the long putter being legalized in the first place.
Golf should be a traditional game, and they should have left it alone along time ago. Their job should be preservation and education, not just acting recklessly and pandering to special interest.
In my opion no stroke should be allowed to anchor. Anyway, funny that Finchem would announce the stance in the middle of a WGC event, its no co-incidence.
I believe we’ll hear from the european tour by the end of the week who’ll apparently back the R&A to the hilt. Sense to prevail 
there has been guys anchoring the putter to there body for a long time. to there belt or inner thigh etc. i just think the putter should be no longer than the shortest club in your bag. stroke it how you want.
but OBVIOUSLY the biggest issue is not the putting. start with toning back the ball and the the clubs. maybe grow some rough too?
Players simply have too much input & influence. It all started with Tiger. His power & play drew the crowds and the $$$. Tiger can’t drive the ball, so he only schedules tournaments where he’ll have distinct advantages off the tee with not much fear of trouble. Tournaments change in order to attract him. Everyone studies Tiger & catches up with his length, the ‘new generation’. Now TV audiences are hooked on power play & distance. Gotta keep the big hitters and the audience happy, keep that gravy train rolling.
Sadly this new equipment is basically making the distance rich richer, and the poor poorer… Striking the ball on the range into a strong gust of wind with my 975d, pure strike, penetrating flight it was carrying about 230 yards (winter conditions 
) Pulling out my Nike VRS pro the ball instantly flew another 30. The head looked huge but this was marketed as a smaller ‘players’ driver!
Golf badly needs sorting out. Dial back the game. promote the hell out of re-max to satisfy the distance craving. Its like race circuit golf vs dragstrip golf. I personally love re-max. nothing wrong with a cheeky 1/4 mile whopping everynow & again is there?
Golf needs to return to its ballstriking roots not the putting contest it is. Its why there is such a fuss amongst the pro’s about the anchoring. I personally feel anchoring gives a distinct advantage in windy conditions too. Anyway, sadly the ballstriking ship sailed 20 years ago
IMO, the R & A is to blame. After, Ernie Els won The 2012 Open, the R&A put pressure on the USGA to go along with them so there would still only be one governing set of rules. The oposition by and large is coming from Europe, not from the United States (PGA of America, PGA Tour, Golf Course Owners Association, etc.).
Imagine telling someone that it is ok to develop your game for the past twenty plus years in accordance with the rules, only to tell them that all that practice will now go to waste?
How does this grow the game? Who really benefits from this? When did it become such a serious issue? There are so many more important issues than this.
Require the putting club to be the shortest club in the bag. Can’t be more upright than a wedge. Shaft entry into the head must be at least an inch off center. That should take care of it.
I don’t think this part is necessary. Plenty of great players in the persimmon era with putters more upright than their wedges. Rest of it sounds good though.
Geoff Mangum on the latest:
Snead early on had a perfectly upright center shafted putter than he then straddled the line with putting like a pendulum. That was banned so he went side saddle. If the club had a lie angle restriction, then that method would not be feasible.
The anchoring rule has too many gray areas to me. What if you kept your fist just an inch away from your chest. At what point can’t your arm touch your body? Is it the left hand with the thumb up the problem? What about the claw grip? What if a guy pins his left arm to the body, uses the long putter but his fist is not touching the body?
The problem with the USGA is they seem so afraid to restrict the gear. Every other sport I can think of restricts the gear.
Better to restrict the gear and leave freedom of technique to the player, rather than try to ban the technique but leave the gear issue wide open to technological advances. That approach has already failed and ruined the game which was arguably the greatest game ever invented that basically stood unchanged for nearly 70 years.
The real problem is with the frying pan drivers in the hands of pros… not the long putter. Pros hitting wedges or short irons into every par 4 and turning every par 5 on a classic track into a par 4 has had such a greater impact on ruining the pro game than long putters.
Because of the terrible decisions they have made in the past… they can’t win either way now. Long putters should not be legal, but if they ban them… then it’s disrespectful to the guys who have used them for 20 years and won with them. Do you take away their trophies like Lance Armstrong? Regardless, history leaves an asterisk if they are banned to some degree.
The question I have never heard a responsible answer to is…
"what was wrong with the game of golf in the persimmon era? (the game itself, not the financially exploitable demographic of people with golf clubs in the trunk of their Cadillacs)
The other non-starter in this argument in my opinion is that I’ve used this for 20 years or whatever, it’s not fair, woe is me. What about when they banned the small ball? Every player in Britain used it and some for their whole lives. If you can’t pick up a short putter and find a way to use it in this day and age where everyone experiments with weird grips etc, then you’re not looking hard enough.
Your comparing equipment to what defines a stroke, which are two different issues.
If the USGA in their infinite wisdom decided tomorrow that the true definition of “all strokes” is to play cross-handed only, would that be oK or are we just not trying hard enough to conform?
The main argument I hear is that things change and technology moves on and golf is just part of that sub process.
But I cannot think of one other sport that has been so adversely affected… or a sport that has so radically allowed technology to change the game. Golf has changed the material and dimple pattern on the ball, the material and size of the head, the material and length of the shaft. They have had to build new courses or stadiums to accommodate.
Baseball is still using leather gloves, leather ball, wooden bat. Field has not changed dimensions. Outfield’s had different length to the walls to give character as did classic golf courses varied in length.
Basketball, the court is still the same size. The ball is basically the same. Hoop height the same.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Cricket is still the same. Soccer is the same. There may be some small changes implemented here and there … as there was in golf from time to time… but nothing so radical as in golf.
I just can’t understand why they make such a fuss about the putter and grooves when the issue is the ball combined with the frying pan heads. By making the head so much bigger, you can make the shaft longer, and swing so much harder at it without fear of missing the ball.
If they limited the size of the driver head back to what was conventional, limited the length of the shaft with the driver and putter, and brought back a higher spin rate on the ball and rolled back the heat on it… then golf would be played as it was and the game would make sense again and have historical reference restored.
I’ve probably missed this somewhere,
but what is the definitive reason for banning anchoring and why was it acceptable by the governing bodies until 2012?
They claim that because two of the last 3 US Opens have been won by players using long putters… so they decided to ban them. Pretty silly, but I am never surprised by the stupidity of the USGA. The problem is not the long putters, but a combination of the frying pan drivers and the golf ball. Trampoline effect coming off the face of the driver with a head way too big that takes the precision out of the swing and allows players to swing much too hard with no fear of missing the ball.
It breaks the long standing tradition of the game regarding clubhead size that goes all the way back to the hickory era. It’s unacceptable as far as I am concerned. Any game or sport seeks a serendipity between the board or playing field and the pieces or equipment that are used to play it. A pro player could not show up at a major league baseball game with a giant titanium bat that would make it nearly impossible to miss a pitch. Ruling bodies are in place to stop this silliness from happening. The USGA has failed golf miserably. The long putter and the grooves issue are only distracting from the real problem which has been the obsoleting of the games prized and historic tracks that have been gifted to our game from the previous generations with good intentions. How could real estate like the Monterrey Peninsula be secured in today’s economy and then have these amazing golf courses constructed for future generations to play and compete on? It could not happen now. So rather than honor and celebrate the great efforts of the games forefathers, we instead change the clubs and the ball so that the game makes no sense playing them in their traditional form. It’s one of the most absurd things I have ever heard of. Almost as absurd as not being able to play golf on 99% of the golf courses with legal steel spiked shoes. The steel spikes are still legal by the USGA, but you can’t wear them. Not even in their Open qualifiers.
The marks left by soft spikes are much worse. What sport are you not allowed to wear legal footware to compete?
The slow play issue is another huge problem that the rules are not addressing. There are any number of things that can and should be done all the way down to the club level but the USGA continues to ignore and would rather focus on how wide or deep the grooves on the clubs are down to micrometers.
They talk all week during US Open coverage about what is good for the game or protecting the game. Well, either they are insane or I am insane. But if I am insane, then all the great players and architects that came before my time were insane also. I’m not buying it. The USGA are and is the problem.