When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Doug Ferguson tells the tale of Tim Clark's apparently impressive appearance at the PGA Tour non-mandatory mandatory player meeting held at Torrey Pines last week.
Geoff Ogilvy had this to say about Clark's questions and comments of USGA officials Mike Davis and Glenn Nager, comments which players generally refused to elaborate to Ferguson about:
"He's been researching this the whole offseason," Ogilvy said. "He basically put his position out there, and probably positions that Mike hadn't thought about or didn't acknowledge as importantly as Tim saw them.
"What Tim did achieve ... whether he had any effect on the USGA position, a big portion of the ambivalent people were on Tim's side when they walked out of the room."
We've had some nice response numbers for various anchoring polls and while those on this site would never be called scientific, they are nonetheless revealing. With last week's prior to the PGA Tour player meeting, I thought it'd be worth revisiting the various polls.
Golfdatatech found that 60% of golfers support the ban.
In one GeoffShackelford.com poll before the anchoring ban announcement, 69% were in favor of anchoring from 974 votes.
The number slightly dropped to 65% of 1,346 votes after the proposed 14-1b announcement.
And you may recall way back when asking about the possible rule change, bifurcation was on the polling table and 31% of 605 votes were for bifurcation.
When the question was posed about timing of the anchoring ban, 41% of 723 votes were for an October 2013 start (when the 2013-'14 season starts). 31% were for bifurcation, presumably to let average golfers to anchor while pros lost the privilege.
And last week 80% of you out of over 500 votes were in favor of a ban applying to the PGA Tour, with a 2013-14 start for Tour play edging 2016 43% to 37%.
Just based on these numbers, it's hard to see how the governing bodies come out of the "comment period" without solid feedback to reiterate their stance. I'm sure Nate Silver has a word for this, but I'm not far enough along in his book to tell you what it is!
You can read the full release and survey results here.
The highlights from a survey of "1,766 randomly selected golfers drawn from Golf Datatech’s exclusive Serious Golfer Database, who play an average of 68 rounds per year with an average handicap of 14.3."
· 60% of respondents believe that the governing bodies of golf should ban the anchoring of clubs to the body, while 40% believe they should not.
· 62% of respondents do not believe the anchoring ban will cause some amateur golfers to enjoy the game less.
· If the proposed rule is enforced in 2016, 31% of current long putter users will continue to anchor their putter, while 31% will not anchor against their body, and 38% will switch to a conventional putter.
I'm beginning to think the anchoring ban was a clever ploy by the governing bodies to unlock previously muted opinions on the distance issue!
Royal and Ancient Golf Club member Michael Bamberger is the latest to note the Old Course changes with little enthusiasm but says "the real problem is that the R&A/USGA have consistently lacked a 'staff futurist' to anticipate how various issues would spiral."
The R&USGA should be focused on how to make courses far shorter and easier to maintain. As modern layouts approach 8,000 yards, maintenance becomes incredibly expensive (a cost that's passed on to golfers), and the courses become excessively punitive and excruciating slow.
So, where to start? Brown, for starters, should truly be the new green. Augusta National, ridiculously verdant, sets a terrible example in this regard.
But where the governing bodies absolutely blew it was by allowing big-headed titanium drivers almost 20 years ago. It's because Dustin Johnson can use modern weaponry to drive the ball 370 yards that the Old Course is getting these pointless renovations.
And add him to the bifurcation camp.
The modern ball, coming off the face of the modern driver, flies way too far for golfers on TV trying to break 60. But it doesn't for us, shooting our newspaper 89s. The solution is two sets of rules. Rory and Co. should have a ball they can call their own. Bifurcation. That's the word they don't want us to use.
"I think it's kind of dumb," said pro golfer Chip Lynn of Lillington. "There's a lot of other stuff that they could ban that affects the game more."
Lynn is a former Fayetteville State golfer who now plays on the Egolf Tour and got through the first round of PGA Tour qualifying this year. He said he tried a belly putter in "six or seven events" this year and found it didn't help him.
"I didn't putt any better," he said. "I don't think the belly putter gives you that much more advantage. I didn't notice anything different. My putts weren't better during the round."
Lynn said technology has affected the game more than anchored putters.
"I agree with Webb Simpson who said there are a lot more things that have affected the game than just the belly putter," he said. "I don't think it's that big of a deal.
"If you're going to change that rule, you probably need to do something about the balls, the driver heads and the technology that has really affected the game instead of the belly putters."
And Adam Scott continued to press his case on this theme Wednesday, asking for some consistency from the governing bodies
Maybe, just maybe, all of this crying out for a distance solution was part of the plan to start with when the anchoring ban came about? I know, they aren't that clever. But the unintended consequences of screwing with the Old Course and moving first on anchoring could ultimately work out in the favor of the governing bodies.
**Thanks to reader PMDF6 for this Frank Deford NPR commentary on the same theme. The link includes an audio version of DeFord reading it.
Now understand, modern golfers have kryptonite drivers with club heads as large as prize pumpkins, and steroid balls that would not pass the drug test, even if the hapless International Cycling Union were doing the random sampling.
Golfers are slugging the dimpled rockets so far that all sorts of classic courses have had to be lengthened — even the sacred Old Course at St. Andrews. This is like if baseball bats and balls had been supercharged so much that Bud Selig decreed that now it had to be 100 feet instead of 90 between bases.
But never mind the bazooka transcontinental drives. No. The golf honchos have issues with the little itty-bitty part of the game called putting. If the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient were in charge of nuclear proliferation, they would handle things by legislating the size of bayonets.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
