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“For as long as it’s legal, I’ll keep cheating with the rest of them,” declared Els of his belly-putter
The
Long and the Short of It
South African legend Ernie Els talks to Lewine Mair about the reasons why he turned to the controversial belly-putter – and why he understands the governing bodies’ desire to ban its use.
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AFP
hen the R&A and the USGA announced before Christmas that they were planning to ban the anchoring of putters from January 2016, not too many of the longputter men were as philosophical as Ernie Els. Long before he wielded his belly-putter to such telling effect at last year’s Open Championship, the South African knew that he and his club were never going to be partners for life. Instead, he saw the union as little more than a brief fling. As he declared last year, “For as long as it’s legal, I’ll keep cheating with the best of them.” Els, after he had read the Christmas announcement, took officialdom up on their somewhat late-in-the-day offer to listen to the views of anyone who cared to voice them. He made a call to St Andrews and afterwards issued a statement of his own: “I have now discussed things with Peter Dawson [the CEO of the R&A] and while I am not altogether in favour of the proposed ruling, I fully respect the R&A’s decision.” It was at last November’s HSBC Championship across the border at Mission Hills that the long-putter brigade were advised of what the game’s governing bodies had in mind. Keegan Bradley, for one, spoke in terms of legal action. “I’m going to do whatever I have to do to protect myself and other players on tour,” he warned. “I hear the USGA and R&A have talked to a lot of players already. Well, they’ve never talked to me. They should ask for our side of the story before they make any drastic decision which I think they already have.” Els did not want to align himself with Bradley and such other angry souls as Adam Scott and Carl Pettersson. In sticking his heels in, he would only have made it tougher for himself to re-establish a relationship with his old short putter. Also, he could not complain that he had not had any kind of an input to the debate. He had been asked for his opinion early on, only no one had come back to
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Els did not want to align himself with Keegan Bradley. In sticking his heels in, he would only have made it tougher for himself to re-establish a relationship with his old short putter.
AFP
Clockwise from top: Els rolls in this 12-foot putt on the final green at Lytham to post a target that Adam Scott couldn’t match; to the victor go the spoils: Els commiserates with Scott, one of his best friends on Tour; the South African took umbrage to David Feherty’s comments about his putting during the 2012 Tavistock Cup 36
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him after he claimed his fourth Major title at Lytham. That was when he would like to have explained that his long putter had far less to do with his success than officialdom seemed to think. At Mission Hills, he took time to talk through his putting experiences over the years, whilst simultaneously coming up with a full explanation as to why he had putted as well as he did at The Open. The first thing he wanted to get across was that while his belly-putter had had a hand in his golfing revival, it had never served as the magic wand which the media had made it out to be: “People have been led to believe that if you pick up a longer putter and anchor it to your chin, chest, belly or wherever, all your troubles are over. That, though, is so much nonsense. ” He cheerfully admitted that he had once been guilty of seeing the long-putter as pretty foolproof himself. Back in 2004, when Vijay Singh
switched to a long putter and soared from outside the top 100 on the putting statistics to inside the top 10, he led the way in calling for a ban on the implement. “I believe nerves and the skill of putting are all part of the game,” were the words he used at the time. His change of heart occurred in 2010 as he slipped from 59th to 159th in the putting averages – and dropped out of the all-important top 50 in the World Rankings. This great champion returned to his putting background to hazard a guess as to why things had gone so badly wrong. “As a kid,” he began, “I was a great putter but, after nearly 30 years of pressure putting – from the time I was 12 to 41 – I lost the knack. It could have been the gathering pressure of all those competitive years or it could simply have been ‘an age thing’. I’ll never know.” He started experimenting with the long putter around the time of the 2011 Masters and, initially, it was an out-and-out embarrassment. Time after time, he had to explain himself to fellow-players who would repeat his comments of seven years before. The embarrassment factor apart, there were technical problems. “It [the belly putter] is so HKGOLFER.COM
much heavier than any other in the club that it throws off my feel,” he complained. “I get off the green with this heavy putter and then I get on the next tee and the driver feels too light.” By the time he finished fourth in the Frys.com Open in October 2011 (for his first top 10 in 12 months) he felt he was finally getting everything to blend. However, whatever the putter he had in hand, he was still having trouble “trying not to miss putts instead of trying to make them.” As a result, he was woefully tentative. So tentative in fact that David Feherty seized the chance to poke fun at him at the 2012 Tavistock Cup. “He’ll soon be putting with a live rattlesnake,” announced the Irishman to a giggling gallery on the first tee. Feherty’s comment served as the worst of setbacks. “I suppose,” mused Els, “that David’s got to try and be funny in his position but it’s all too easy to poke fun at people in distress, which I was.” Els digressed to talk of good players who had escaped any significant spell in the putting doldrums, with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player at the top of his list. Ben Crenshaw and Brad Faxon were the next to come to mind before he thought again. He had seen Crenshaw, once the greatest putter of them all, going through a ‘putting low’, with the same applying to Faxon. “But they were not where I was,” he claimed. “At one stage, I was as low as low can go.” HKGOLFER.COM
He started experimenting with the long putter around the time of the 2011 Masters and, initially, it was an out-and-out embarrassment. Time after time, he had to explain himself to fellow-players.
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Six of the Best: Players Who Will be Affected BY THE BAN Keegan Bradley
Vijay Singh
Els aside, the world number 13 is the most recognisable belly putter user – and arguably its biggest defender. This comes as no surprise when you consider he's racked up more than US$7.5 million in earnings in a little over two years on Tour. Bradley, who won the 2011 US PGA Championship in a play-off over Jason Dufner, averages 28.88 putts per round, good enough for 54th place in the putting statistics.
Although the big Fijian used a short putter for his three Major wins, he has relied on his belly putter in recent times. Looking at the statistics, however, Singh may want to think again. He averaged 29.41 putts per round in 2012, placing him in 121st place on the PGA Tour in this particular category.
Carl Pettersson Thongchai Jaidee
AFP
Els with his son Ben, who is autistic. “[Ben] likes the flight of the ball and the sound. He would have been getting very excited [during The Open] and I wanted to make him really excited.” 38
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It was after he failed to qualify for the 2012 Masters that Els looked for something beyond the long putter and hit on the idea of sharpening his hand-eye coordination. He had started to think long and hard about the part played by this combination in rugby and cricket – and very quickly came to the conclusion that it could work for him. Especially since he had noticed from studying old videos that he had lost the art of focusing on the ball. It was Johann Rupert, the South African golfing philanthropist and founder of Richemont, the luxury goods group, who introduced him to Sherylle Calder, an expert in the field of “visual performance skills”. Calder, who believes that negative thinking is rooted in visual skills, was soon introducing Els to her famous “Eye Gym” system, which she has used to great effect with the New Zealand All Blacks and Australia’s cricketers and their umpires. Calder is rightly protective of what she teaches but the kind of exercises which feature in any hand-eye co-ordination work-out are apt to
include racquet sports, table tennis, visualising what piece needs to go where in a jigsaw – and even a regular stint of embroidery. Els began to see results with his ninth place finish at the US Open, while he was back to his confident best down the stretch at Lytham. Away from feeling the benefits of Calder’s work, he was inspired beyond belief by thoughts of his autistic son, Ben. Ben, whose condition has prompted Els and his wife, Liezl, to raise funds for an all-purpose, US$20 million autism centre in Florida, kept thinking of how thrilled the boy would have been as he holed one putt after another on what would be a homeward half of just 32 strokes. “Ben,” he explained that evening, “likes the flight of the ball and the sound. He would have been getting very excited and I wanted to make him really excited.” He suspected that most successful long-putter users had similar stories up their sleeves, all of which could have contributed to a better-rounded debate on the long-putter. “It’s entirely fair,” continued the Champion Golfer of 2012, “for the R&A and the USGA to say that it is easier to groove your stroke with a long putter. But it definitely doesn’t, as they appear to think, take nerves out of the equation. “I can assure you that there isn’t a long putter person alive who sees a three-footer as a done deal.” HKGOLFER.COM
Webb Simpson The reigning US Open champion, like Bradley, has accumulated vast riches over the past two seasons thanks to a supremely consistent long game and an everimproving performance on the greens with his belly putter. Simpson, who had seven top 10 finishes in 2012, wields his controversial club 28.79 times on average per round.
Adam Scott Last year's Open Championship runner-up has transformed his game since turning to the long putter. His second place at Lytham aside, Scott came close to his maiden Major title at the 2011 Masters before winning the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational the same year. Although he still only ranks 116th in the number of putts he takes per round, with 29.39, the Australian averaged over 30 putts prior to making the switch, which made him, statistically at least, one of the worst putters on Tour. –Alex Jenkins
AFP
“It’s entirely fair for the R&A and the USGA to say that it is easier to groove your stroke with a long putter. But it definitely doesn’t, as they appear to think, take nerves out of the equation.”
The Thai legend made the switch to the belly putter a couple of years ago and, while it took a while for him to become fully adjusted, managed to win the ISPS Handa Wales Open last summer for his first victory outside Asia. Jaidee, who has five European Tour titles to his credit, averaged 29.80 putts per round last season and told HK Golfer he'll be able to make the switch back to the short blade with ease.
The burly Swede has used his long putter for the past 16 years and describes the proposed ban as a "witch hunt". Pettersson is thought to be among several players who might consider legal action if the rule is adopted, and he is also among the most successful: averaging just 28.46 putts per round, Petterson is ranked 12th in putting on the PGA Tour.
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