Long putters will become the norm

Oglivie tweeted at the weekend: "I have decided to give the belly putter a try in my last tournament of the year at CMN Hospitals Classic @Disney."

On hearing about Ogilvie's tweet, Brad Faxon was reported by PGA Tour columnist Melanie Hauser to have responded with a huge smile for, after being ranked as one of the game's greatest putters in his early years on tour, he has recently switched to the longest of all the putters, a broomtick handle Scotty Cameron, and indeed was playing with it when he won his first over-50s title at the Champions Tour's Insperity Championship on Sunday.

When it became clear recently that he was not putting as well as he used to, Faxon got the broomstick putter(Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Select Laguna 2 Putter), "well, just because...."

He's still not sure it should be legal., but thinks it might become the new norm just like the double-handed back hand did in tennis

"I believe it's kind of like the two-handed backhand in tennis 25 years ago. It was only the odd guy that hit a two-handed backhand. Everybody else had the one-handed backhand.

"Now, if you don't have a two-handed backhand you can barely compete unless you're Roger Federer.

"I think the belly putter is going to be like the two-handed backhand. It's going to become accepted and you'll see more and more people using it."

Even Ernie Els, one of the long-handled flat-stick's greatest critics a few years ago, is now using a Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Select Laguna 2 Putter as he tries to recapture some of the magic that has given him three major titles and many scores of titles world wide.

Although he missed two relative straight forward putts that would have put him in the play-offs at the Frys.Com Open, his new Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Select Laguna 2 Putter did help him capture 4th place in his first top-10 finish this season, and his putting was a vast improvement on what it has perhaps been his leanest season ever.

Els is still not sure about the legality of the long handled putter, it seems. That's if you take seriously his wisecrack at the Frys which went like this: "As long as it's legal, I'll keep cheating like the rest of them."

Bernard Langer has had a hugely successful career, both on the regular US and European Tours as well as on the over-50s Champions Tour.

Indeed the iconic US-based German has been ranked second only to the late, great Sevy Ballesteros as Europe's finest golfer, but none of this would have been possible without his Broomstick putter.

For many year's ago he developed the dreaded 'yips' in his mid-30s and would almost certainly have seen a magnificent career go down the drain had he not discovered a broom-handled putter which was first made famous by Sam Torrance, ironically a native of Scotland, the nation that gave the world the modern version of golf.

I say 'the modern version of golf', because some history books will tell you that Scottish mercenaries first discovered a version of the game called 'gholf' in Holland while fighting for various masters in various battles over there and brought the game home to Scotland where it developed into what it is today on links land between the sea and the grazing pastures of the day.

I had an actual Sam Torrance broomstick putter once and found that its pendulum action made for some very accurate putting from medium to close range, but I was still having difficulty with getting the right weight with my longer range putts, when a club member who had contracted a horrible case of the 'yips' asked me if he could "try it out".

Well try it out he did. and guess what? He loved it so much, he refused to return it to me, mainly because putters of this kind were a rarity at the time and difficult to come by.

As I said, I wasn't so sure about using a broom handle putter for the longer putts anyway, partly because a Gordie I sometimes played with carried a broomstick putter for his medium to short range putts and a regular putter to cater for the longer stuff so I took up my Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Select Laguna 2 Putterusurper's offer to pay me twice as much as I had paid for it.

The upshot of it was that I went back to my trusty Ping Zing with a US (not Chinese) manufactured manganese head and simply lengthened the shaft to effectively turn it into a Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Select Laguna 2 Putter.

Like all of us club golfers, I can putt magnificently on some occasions and dreadfully on others, but I do believe it has slowed up the decline that invariably takes its toll on our putting prowess as the years march on.

Quite frankly I believe it is now far too late to start declaring long-handled putters illegal. There are simply too many doing a great job for their owners, both in the pro and amateur games.

If you can add huge numbers of yards to a driver by giving it a fibre-glass shaft and a tungsten steel head with screws that allow you to adjust it for fade and for draw, I cant see why you can't add a foot or two to your putting shaft.

In the mid 1920's one of US golf's best pool players was banned for using a pool cue as his putter in professional golf, but that I can understand that. 

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