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
Ryan Lavner, on Jack Nicklaus' comments from today's Honda Classic telecast appearance.
Not music to Tim Finchem's ears:
“It may be to some of the fellas’ detriment, one way or the other, but what I think the ultimate decision should be is the ruling bodies of golf and not the Tour.”
He also spoke at length about Rory McIlroy, as quoted in this unbylined story at ESPN.com.
LPGA Commish Mike Whan was asked earlier in the week and made it hard to see the tour going any way but in full support of the USGA and R&A on the anchoring ban.
Whan:
On the issue of the USGA and R&A, I've said this many times, there's nobody better placed to establish the right rules of the game than the R&A and the USGA. They don't have a stake in it in any other way; in equipment or players, etc., and we have been playing by their rules for a long time. I certainly expect the LPGA will be playing by their rules for a long time from now on.
I respect the way they have gone about this which is they have given us the opportunity to provide feedback. As most of you know that follow the LPGA, and most of you do, we don't have a large number of anchored or belly putter players. I've asked Heather Daly‑Donofrio, our tour head from an operations perspective, to reach out to every player that we know that does and get their feedback; so their feedback will be involved as well.
But on a personal level, this is just Mike Whan speaking, I believe in the R&A and the USGA and their role in the game to do what is right without any stake one way or the other.
Randall Mell also got a quote from LPGA spokesman Kraig Kann who says the tour will issue a firm stance once the governing bodies decide how they will go forward following the comment perio.
My colleague Sam Weinman is probably right that there are probably bigger issues in the game to be quibbling over than the proposed anchoring ban. I might have agreed, until the entire episode took on a new, bizarre and disconcerting twist when Commissioner Tim Finchem made his case last weekend by severely stretching the truth. And as Frank Hannigan pointed out in his letter to this site, Finchem had a long time to prepare his case.
The wise readers of this site knew it right away, and now the media is now calling him out. It should be noted, as I pointed out on Morning Drive Monday, that Finchem may just be doing the bidding (for a change) for his players, and averting a lawsuit. But a master debater who has had over a year to prepare a rebuttal failed so badly that his national television appearance could reflect poorly on the PGA Tour.
Jaime Diaz dismantles all of Finchem's key arguments for opposing the anchoring ban in a must-read Golf World column.
The lethal paragraph:
It would have been easier to accept if the commissioner hadn't been so obviously spinning. Like claiming that 20 percent of amateurs anchor, which is patently ridiculous compared to Golf Datatech research that puts the number at less than 5 percent. Or saying that the USGA had allowed anchoring since 1975 when the first long-putter cases occurred in the mid-1980s. Or maintaining that the USGA and R&A have conceded that anchoring provides no competitive advantage, when the associations have taken no stance on that criteria. Or that Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley "grew up" with the belly putter, when Simpson switched from conventional in college and Bradley a year after turning pro. All things the old debate champion wouldn't have done with a real opponent in front of him.
Robert Lusetich refers to Finchem's "bullying tactics" and highlights how the debate shifted with Finchem not exactly refuting the prevailing view of players that its unfair to have amateurs making the rules of golf:
Instead of arguing the merits of anchoring, proponents have twisted the debate, making it more about the USGA and R&A.
They persuaded PGA Tour players by preying on their historic dislike of golf’s ruling bodies; on the idea that amateurs shouldn’t be deciding what professionals can and cannot do.
They said that the USGA has allowed anchoring for 40 years, that’s there’s no data showing a competitive advantage for anchoring — a dubious assertion given many bad putters anchor, thus dragging down performance data — and that it won’t grow the game, as many golfers with the yips would stop playing.
“The USGA approved it twice,” Finchem noted.
And of course, they did not, something Bob Harig addressed already.
Michael Williams at GolfWRX also takes on the Commissioner and says "golf must be honest and consistent about its reasons" for banning anchoring, and he says the USGA/R&A has held up their end of the bargain. By going on national television the way Finchem did while uttering factually problematic statements, Williams says Finchem failed the game when he tried to pass off the "no competitive advantage" canard.
Finchem said in an interview there there was an “absence of data or any basis to conclude that there is a competitive advantage to be gained by using anchoring.” In one sense, he is correct. Of the top 20 percent of the Tour’s leading putters, none used an anchored putter. But the point is not if the long putter makes a given player statistically better than everyone else; the only meaningful statistic is if it makes the player better than he or she might have been using an unanchored putter with a conventional stroke. While the Tour has no way to compile such statistics, you can bet the players and their putting gurus do. If the putter works by the numbers on the practice green, then you can bet they are going to bring it to the course.
The USGA/R&A never conceded this "no competitive advantage" point. They made clear this is about the potential that an anchored stroke may provide a competitive advantage and may alter the competitive challenge of making a stroke.
The USGA/R&A emphasized that its proposal "comes in response to the recent upsurge in the use of anchored putting strokes at all levels of the game, combined with growing advocacy by players and instructors that anchoring the club may alleviate some of the inherent challenges of traditional putting and therefore may be a preferred way to play the game."
And: "The player’s challenge is to direct and control the movement of the entire club in making the stroke. Anchoring the club removes the player’s need to do so by providing extra support and stability for the stroke, as if one end of the club were physically attached to the body.”
So here's the big problem with the "no competitive advantage" talking point Finchem presented: anchorers say that this method of lodging hand against torso does not provide them an advantage, but the moment it was suggested the governing bodies might take that anchoring option away, they said they would their living would be fundamentally impacted if not for the ability to anchor.
Who needs data when you get admissions like that? 
And then there's Tim Clark's "plight."
Randall Mell talked to some players at the Honda Classic Tuesday who admitted that Clark's sad saga of genetic condition convinced them to oppose the ban.
Another canard.
“Tim Clark got up and said some things that were very sincere, about his livelihood and his family,” said Brandt Jobe, who was there. “When Tim spoke, that really impacted players who would have been on the fence. A lot of people who didn’t really care that much were affected by the points Tim made that night and decided, ‘I’m going in that direction.’”
Clark has a genetic condition that prevents him from turning his forearms and wrists inward. He has used a long putter for several years.
And under the proposed rule change, Clark will (A) be able to continue to use the same exact putter he uses now, and (B) will be able to grip that putter exactly the same way he has before, with one difference: the putter must not be anchored to his torso.
Clark and those with similar physical ailments merely have to move the putter 1/2 to 1 inch from their bodies.
Same grips. Same putters. Only now they have to use only their hands and arms to stroke the ball.
Naturally, we all know these pros are unhappy about this simple shift because they believe they have gained a competitive advantage in anchoring the putter against their torso. Trying to claim anything otherwise while also suggesting livelihoods will be impacted means the "no competitive advantage" claim is an outright falsehood. And this is why any empathy some of us might have had for professional anchorers will be abandoned. (As for amateur yippers who may give up the game, that's another subject entirely and I don't know the answer.)
Professional golfing anchorers have a little less than four years to move their putter grip just millimeters away from their chest. In light of the mistruths they've spread after a good-faith effort by the governing bodies to hear their feedback, the USGA and R&A must call Tim and Tim's bluff and usher in the proposed Rule 14-1b ban.
Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan saw PGA Tour Commissioner's appearance on Sunday's WGC Match Play telecast and felt compelled to analyze the tour's surprising decision to not support the proposed ban on anchoring putters. You can read Frank's past letters here.
Letter from Saugerties February 27,2013
PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem gets away with murder.
During his endless interviews throwing the USGA under the bus last weekend on the anchoring issue, nobody asked him the right question: when did you first know that the USGA was moving in the direction of a ban on anchoring and what did you say in reaction?
The PGA Tour is represented at USGA Rules of Golf committee meetings by an employee named Tyler Dennis. It is surely his job to tell Finchem where the USGA is heading. My point is this: Finchem last year, long before the USGA made known its position on anchoring, could have stopped the movement cold by telling the USGA and/or the R&A at the British Open that he did not know how his members would react to a ban on anchoring.
The USGA exists to offer a set of rules that it believes make sense, accompanied by an argument that the game is best served if those rules are broadly accepted. Nobody has to buy that argument but virtually everybody does. As former USGA Executive Director David Fay once said, "We govern by all the power not vested in us."
Albeit unhappily, the USGA recognizes that the influence of the PGA Tour is enormous because golfers think what they see on television is the genuine article. This has been so since the 1960s when the Tour was first invited to participate in the rules making process. The consequence has been worldwide uniformity, a most unlikely achievement given the money and egos of modern golf.
The USGA would never have moved to ban anchoring had it known the Tour would diverge. The average male golfer has about a 17 handicap and struggles to break 100. Do you think the USGA cares what method he uses to putt? Hypothesize that anchoring had somehow caught on in everyday golf but was used by no Tour players. There is no chance the rules would have been changed.
Finchem evidently misread his members - who are his employers. That can happen. He's dealing with 300 relatively young people who have a lot of money and very insular views of the world. Few of them have ever done a lick of work other than hit golf balls. It's a pure recipe for fickleness.
Meanwhile, the USGA is hardly blameless. Given their policy of rules uniformity as the Holy Grail, they should never have gone where they did without an iron-clad agreement from the Tour. Instead, they end up with golf's version of sequestration.
Since the ban was not to take effect until 2016, along with a 90-day period inviting comments, I figure the USGA was racked with internal dissension. Finchem could have made it easier for them to back off by voicing the opposition of the players quietly - even last week. Instead, he opted to go as public as possible, accompanied with wild specious arguments such as claiming 20% of amateur golfers are anchorers. Evidently he got that number from his new best friends at the PGA of America. Why he chose to play it as he did, whereby there must be a winner and a loser, is beyond my comprehension.
I see much of the USGA clumsiness as a consequence of systemic foolishness. All power is granted to a volunteer executive committee of 15. Some are golf sophisticates. Some are golf ignorant. The USGA by laws say that the president of the executive committee, who lives nowhere near headquarters and already has a full time job, is the CEO. The same by laws refer to the USGA staff as "clerks." The executive director of the staff of some 300 has no job description.
But let's suppose that the president happens to be a gem, a genuine prize. (As USGA Executive Director I was lucky enough to have three). USGA presidents serve two years and then depart. (The USGA has had only one one-year president. That was Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of US presidents, in 1935. I have no idea why he bailed out early.)
Has anyone ever heard of a viable institution that has a bona fide winner as CEO and then dumps him after two years? Even college presidents hang around for four or five years as their agents search for higher paying jobs.
Ryan Lavner reports from Tucson where he spoke to Policy Board member Jim Furyk about last night's phone call.
Not surprisingly, Furyk was cryptic in his remarks though this made me wonder if the PGA Tour will not be asking for a withdrawal of the proposed ban:
Said Furyk, “We’re not discussing what we’re going to do – if the USGA does this, how are we going to reply; if the USGA does that, and so on. That’s down the road. We have to wait and see what the USGA indeed does do and then we can figure out what our job is at that point. For right now, it was just a real friendly talk getting ideas.”
Thanks to Darius Oliver for alerting us to Paul Prendergast's lengthy interview with Geoff Ogilvy touching on a number of hot button issues but I couldn't help but focus on his remarks about the R&A's changes to the Old Course at St. Andrews. 
He joins fellow Aussie Peter Thomson in denouncing not only the idea of changing the course to produce higher scores, but also the secretive and deceptive process by which the changes were conceived and executed.
It’s disappointing in that the whole point of it is to make us shoot a slightly higher score every five years [at The Open], and it’s embarrassing – disgusting – that they’re doing it for that reason. I mean .. it’s hard to have the words to describe the arrogance of doing something like that, it’s incredible.
And...
The reason the sport is what it is, is because of St Andrews. It didn’t evolve to the point where it’s at because of people doing what they’re doing right now. It evolved, it didn’t get designed. It came because of nature, all the balls finishing in one place so there were lots of divots and that spot became a bunker. It’s the first place that anyone should ever study when they think about golf course architecture.
This was nice too...there goes Geoff's Royal and Ancient Golf Club membership chances. Join the women of the world.
I think the thing that really affected most people that got emotional about it was the way they went about it. Making a sneaky little announcement the same weekend everyone was talking about the long putter ban. The bulldozers were out the next day. Surely the Old Course deserves a round table of the smartest people in golf with the best intentions and to discuss it for two years before you do anything?
And this is such a key point about the 11th green, and speaks to the absurdity of trying to force uniform green speeds on a course, especially the Old.
They've done plenty of bunker work for maintenance reasons over time but changing contours that have evolved and adding to the 11th green to provide extra pin placements are pretty fundamental changes ...
It’s been fine for 400 years, in the form it’s in it’s been fine for a hundred years. It’s fine!
I mean, if they get crazy wind and you can’t put a pin up the back left on 11 then, oh well. Or, you just have that green running two feet slower than the others. We're the best golfers in the world, surely we can work out that the green is slower. We’re not that precious.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
