Anchorers Go Down In...Schwab Cup Success

Sure there may be a few stragglers through December, but the era of anchored putting essentially came to and end this weekend when Bernhard Langer and Michael Allen battled Billy Andrade down the Charles Schwab Cup Championship stretch. The first two are achorers but will have to give up the habit January 1, 2016.

But as Al Tays notes at GolfChannel.com, Langer is sounding more optimistic going forward than he has in recent years.

Langer has anchored his broomstick putter for 17 years, but he says he's not worried about making a change.

"I've thought about it a little bit," he told reporters in Scottsdale. "I've gathered a few putters, different styles, different lengths, different grips. My first thought is I'll probably go back to what I did before I went to the long putter, which was what [Matt] Kuchar does, holding the putter against the left forearm that way, and Soren Kjeldsen in Europe does the same thing.

"I putted that way for seven years and I won a number of tournaments including the Masters, and if you can putt on the Masters greens and win with a grip like that, I would think I could do it in other tournaments, but we'll see. There's other options."

On the flatbelly circuit, Adam Scott notched a second place finish in Malaysia and looked good over the putter, while former anchorer Ernie Els hasn't been quite so confident over his blade.