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Webb Simmson's putting stroke


disco111

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Watched yesterday and only caught a brief vid of his stroke, (the forearm brace), but unlike Kutcher's, it looked like he was left hand low and it sure looked like the right hand was pressing the the grip to the left forearm. I thought that particular method was/is non conforming? If it's not than no big whoop, but if it is, then what? I'm just curious that's all. I'm still one of those folks that think the R&A and USGA had/have the heads sequestered in a rectal orifice. The following is offered to just reinforce the position.

 

 

Anchored Putters Aren’t New

Strangely enough, it may have been Simpson’s success at the U.S. Open in 2012 that was one of the catalysts of the rule change.

The USGA and R&A were happy to look the other way for 25 years or so between the time Johnny Miller debuted a belly putter at Pebble Beach in 1985, bracing the putter against his forearm, and 2013.

When Charlie Owens made his own to use on the PGA Tour Champions circuit in 1986, they looked the other way. They were fine when Miller won at Pebble Beach in 1987 using his long putter. They didn’t make noise after Orville Moody won the U.S. Senior Open in 1989, maybe because Moody threatened legal action if they banned it. Rocco Mediate with broomstick? No problem. Paul Azinger using a belly putter? That was OK. Cost Knost winning the U.S. Amateur with a belly putter. Nobody batted an eye. Ditto Webb Simpson. He started using a long putter in his first year at Wake Forest.

Why Did the USGA & R&A Rule Against Anchored Putting?

The USGA and R&A were ok for a quarter of a century with long anchored putters and belly putters. Then they weren’t.

 

It’s likely the R&A’s hair was on fire at that point, and when Adam Scott won the Masters the following spring, the collective heads of the USGA and the R&A exploded. Hello? It was OK for 25 years, but not when three players won the U.S. Open and the British Open and then the Masters? That’s when it was an actual problem?Keegan Bradley became the first golfer to win a major with a belly putter in 2011 at the PGA. It was the first ripple. Then the next year, Simpson won the U.S. Open with a belly putter. A month afterward, Ernie Els won the British Open with a long putter, after Adam Scott, using a long putter, faded over the finishing holes, and Tiger Woods’ charge ran out of gas.

The timing of the change made the two organizations look petty, particularly considering they had ignored it for a quarter of a century. However, they make the rules, and presumably, they decided they would make a rules change.

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As of April, 2017 the method used by Webb Simpson is completely within the Rules. Maybe not tomorrow or next month or next year but it is allowed at this moment, no problem.

 

​Thanks for the reply and clarification.........but now IMO, this brings up yet another "what's up with this ruling". If the so-called anchor ban was established because it allowed players to take the wrists out of the stroke, there by removing the "twitch factor" many have eluded to, then this form of putting falls into the same category. I'm just wonder if the powers that be are slowly coming to the conclusion, that they made a major fopar and are in the slow process of possibly reversing that anchor ban entirely. In essence, it looks as though they have....

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im interested in this topic because a club pro i know and play with/against often is a reformed belly putter now USGA hater / puttring yips sufferer....... 2 weeks ago he went to this method...and he seems to be back to lights out as he was with the belly..... if you watch Webb putt he rarely had one off line this week... almost always missed short or burned the edge.... locking the left wrist and taking the right hand out has to be the closest thing to a belly stroke.... impossible to flip it over....

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If I recall correctly, the ruling says the base of the putter cannot be anchored to a fixed spot on the golfer. Simpson does not anchor to a fixed spot.

 

Locking the putter grip against the left forearm with the right hand sure looks as though it's anchored to a fixed spot IMO. While it's not exactly the focus of the base of the putter grip per se, the base is now sideways locked, so in essence, the base is anchored. Nothing more than a discussion here, but just wondering out loud if things are changing, for the better, also IMO.....

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If I recall correctly, the ruling says the base of the putter cannot be anchored to a fixed spot on the golfer. Simpson does not anchor to a fixed spot.

 

Locking the putter grip against the left forearm with the right hand sure looks as though it's anchored to a fixed spot IMO. While it's not exactly the focus of the base of the putter grip per se, the base is now sideways locked, so in essence, the base is anchored. Nothing more than a discussion here, but just wondering out loud if things are changing, for the better, also IMO.....

 

 

agree... im not aganst anchoring either.. BUT i do not like the current rule thats left the long putter in place... i would like it to be all or nothing , myself...let them anchor or remove all doubt of anchoring.....

 

 

the webb method sure smells of anchoring to me... if your right hand stays locked on your left arm you cannot bend your left wrist without letting go of the putter with your left...therfore it cannot break down ...

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Forearm is part of the arm, not "body".

 

 

for sure...as its written its perfectly legal.... BUT i think its a "loophole" that if Webb wins with or other ex-anchorers adopt and win with , they will close up..

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im interested in this topic because a club pro i know and play with/against often is a reformed belly putter now USGA hater / puttring yips sufferer....... 2 weeks ago he went to this method...and he seems to be back to lights out as he was with the belly..... if you watch Webb putt he rarely had one off line this week... almost always missed short or burned the edge.... locking the left wrist and taking the right hand out has to be the closest thing to a belly stroke.... impossible to flip it over....

 

I saw Ollie Schniederjans do it on the weekend and i got that queesy feeling looking at it and thinking thats basically anchoring. i know alot will disagree but its glued to your wrist/forearm

I basically teach some of my students to chip that way if they suffer from the yips.i have a sand wedge with an extended shaft beyond the grip which basically prevents any breakdown. its a great training aid

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There were already notable golfers "arm locking" when the current rule was written. If USGA/R&A had not intended to allow the "arm lock" they would not have allowed it. It's on the allowable side of the arbitrary line that they chose to draw, for whatever reasons they do things.

 

It's not a loophole, it's simply something that is allowed.

 

P.S. Now don't get me started on the true loophole here. I'm talking the one where if you're a famous Champions Tour golfer who anchors you are exempt from the no-anchoring rule by the simple expedient of saying "I'm not REALLY still anchoring, it just looks like I am".

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Is it just me or does it seem strange and kind of sad that so many golfers Ollie's age (23 is it?) are already going through all sort of contortions to stave off incipient yips?

 

I hear ya. but i teach alot of juniors and alot of them do left hand low at 13-14 its insane. they mimic what they see work on tv so by 23 nothing is off the table but I agree why not continue to groove the stroke that got you there so it responds better to pressure situations?

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Well as long as I've played golf there has been left-hand-low putting. My teaching-pro buddy told me years ago it's probably a genuinely preferable way to putt from a mechanics standpoint, if you were starting out from scratch that way it probably makes a lot of sense.

 

I'm talking about arm-locking and using all sorts of pencil or claw or other tippy-fingers grips. That's just anti-yips there, it's absolutely horrible from an ergonomic and biomechanics sense but has the advantage of forestalling a yip tendency. Or so it seems to me.

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I get the whole left hand low thing. If bow and you lock your left wrist it's very easy to start the ball online. If you do that long enough it's hard as hell to go back to conventional !

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I am just surprised that all of you that think it makes putting "fool proof" don't go ahead and do it. Had a friend doing it with an extended putter on the practice green yesterday so I went over and tried it. Most ungainly awkward feeling ever on a course.

As for the kids that do it. What in the world do you go to if you start out playing golf that way and THEN get the yips?

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Oh I agree with that statement too. That's why I'm not against anchoring. I tried belly , armlock etc and I can't do either. But I think the usga banned it for its appearances and hate the idea of following the rules of an organization too ignorant to write a rule to solve the issue. No way the rule was because of a perceived advantage. Not enough guys were dominating with it. Except langer. He's still dominating with it

 

I will love to see the anchor rule and the groove rule repealed .

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I am just surprised that all of you that think it makes putting "fool proof" don't go ahead and do it. Had a friend doing it with an extended putter on the practice green yesterday so I went over and tried it. Most ungainly awkward feeling ever on a course.

 

I'm the same way with something like a ultra-high-MOI, heavy-head, counterbalanced mallet with an oversized grip. I literally could not miss a 2-1/2 footer if I tried with that sort of setup. But no touch at all from 20+ feet on greens with some speed and contour to them. It's a tradeoff that wouldn't possibly make sense unless I were out there missing several near tap-ins per round with my conventional putter.

 

As for the kids that do it. What in the world do you go to if you start out playing golf that way and THEN get the yips?

 

Exactly my thought. If you're needing to arm-lock plus inverted-claw grip it at age 23 there's nowhere left to go from there. My theory is it's because so many junior golfers play tournaments on greens Stimping 12 from the time they're 10 years old. It used to be a golfer had to get on the PGA Tour or darned near it before facing that sort of nerve-wracking putting speeds.

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i haven't seen what simspon is doing but the description in the OP sounds like exactly what bernhard langer was doing before the broomhandle. my memory isn't good enough to recall if he won his 2 masters with that grip though.

 

YEs, that is exactly Bernhard's first method to counteract the yips.

 

When the USGA came out with the anchor ban, they also wrote that Kuchar's method was within the rules.

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If they were going to ban anchoring, I just wish they'd have written the rule with clarity for what they really wanted to accomplish. If they want putting to be a free swinging motion with the hands and arms then write a rule that doesn't leave any ambiguity. What they've got now is a joke. Either repeal it or re-write so that it makes sense and there's no doubting the intention of the rule

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When the USGA came out with the anchor ban, they also wrote that Kuchar's method was within the rules.

 

​I can sort of understand the Kuchar's method/allowance, for he still grips the putter in a conventional way and forces (for lack of a better description) the grip against his left forearm. Unlike Webb, who actually locks, via his right hand, against the left forearm. We may be dealing in a form of semantics, but locking the stoke against the forearm is the same to me as differentiating to the body (torso). Locking it to any body part, IMO, is against the so-called rules, but now they have kind of opened pandora's box. As has been stated, what would/will happen if more guys go to this method and start winning, yet another back track with the rules? I personally don't have a lot of respect for the governing powers and their efforts to "maintain the games integrity", for to me, they lost that aspect when they let the maunufactures run with technology and banning the anchoring stroke in the first place, after 25+ years of it's OK. I personally think that a couple of well named players got their britches in a bunch and cried foul to the power brokers and then it became sort of a political gift to them and they succeeded in getting the stroke banned. Either the belly or broom stroke were not that easy unto themselves. With the belly putter, you had to watch your breathing or you could easily push or pull the putt and distance putting with either was just below a joke for most folks. The broom stroke had it's own share of problems, in the many ways to just hold the darn thing and in the wind, it was totally worthless. The only good thing about it was that your back didn't hurt from bending over. Anyway, this is nothing more than us weekend warriors discussing the what if's and the why's. Rest assured, it's highly doubtful that we'll have any influence in any out come on this matter......

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As long as people accept the USGA/R&A authority to make these (often silly IMO) arbitrary rules then they'll keep doing it however they see fit. I suspect they are just a couple more over-reaches like the anchoring ban and the whole "everybody go buy new wedges" fiasco away from losing their ability to make such decisions and have the widely followed. But maybe that's just me underestimating the fustiness of golfers.

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im interested in this topic because a club pro i know and play with/against often is a reformed belly putter now USGA hater / puttring yips sufferer....... 2 weeks ago he went to this method...and he seems to be back to lights out as he was with the belly..... if you watch Webb putt he rarely had one off line this week... almost always missed short or burned the edge.... locking the left wrist and taking the right hand out has to be the closest thing to a belly stroke.... impossible to flip it over....

 

I saw Ollie Schniederjans do it on the weekend and i got that queesy feeling looking at it and thinking thats basically anchoring. i know alot will disagree but its glued to your wrist/forearm

I basically teach some of my students to chip that way if they suffer from the yips.i have a sand wedge with an extended shaft beyond the grip which basically prevents any breakdown. its a great training aid

 

this is good advice on the chipping method. I've seen it keep some guys from giving up. I'd rather the putting yips than chipping. you almost can't even play!

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I have an ancient (we're talking 20+ years old) RAM Tom Watson sand wedge with an extra driver shaft forced into the end of the grip, making the whole club about 50" long. As a sufferer of the chipping yips I have long wished it were legal to carry a club like that, simply tuck the extra shaft up under my arm and pivot my whole body to pitch the ball. Or imagine something like one of those Callaway Sure Out wedges extended to 4 feet or so with a grip halfway down the shaft. It would be just like cheating...because it would be cheating ;-)

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As long as people accept the USGA/R&A authority to make these (often silly IMO) arbitrary rules then they'll keep doing it however they see fit.

 

 

I don't think, we the general golfing public, have a choice in the matter, unless a major concerted effort from some group of players/golfers somehow forces the powers to listen. IMO though, it's highly unlikely that they would renounce any part of their authority, to us mere mortals. To be perfectly honest, unless your involved in a rules governed competition, the vast majority of folks play loose and fast with the rules, if in fact they follow them at all. After all, most folks just want to try and hit the ball, go find it and hit it again and if rules are over looked or just ignored, who really cares.

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