Will It Be the PGAnchored Tour?

I first got wind of this Monday, but now it seems like the proposed ban of anchored putting patterns may be in for a difficult experience.

I'm going to drag a few quotes from this ESPN.Com article. By all method you ought to take the time to study the whole piece!

As you may have heard on GC's Golf Central (and it's quoted in the ESPN piece), 13 of the 15 members of the PGA Player Advisory Council -- I'll just call it the PAC from here on -- told Tim Finchem on Monday afternoon that they didn't agree with the proposed ban. And that is something that was totally unexpected by most of the people who follow this sort of thing.

The article prices several players, together with Steve Stricker, Tiger Woods, Joe Ogilvie, and Jim Furyk -- all of whom appear to don't forget dissension with the USGA as nothing out of the regular, and possibly even reasonable.

In fact, if you saw Tuesday's Golf Central you heard several of the facts mentioned in this article. Stricker, for example, is quoted in this article as saying:

"But I can see the tour adopting the guideline pronouncing that it's OK for players to use an extended putter. And we've got in all likelihood a couple other guidelines out right here on our difficult card which are different from USGA rules, too. And that would not be any different, I guess."

And then "hard card" is defined:

A hard card is what sometimes is referred to as "conditions of opposition." For instance, the tour regularly will allow gamers to raise, smooth and update the golfing ball within the fairway in the course of moist situations. The USGA does not permit for such favored lies.

GC had talked at length about the hard card situation.

Part of the motive this is an difficulty is a perceived equity problem -- that is, anchoring has been allowed for 40 years or so and it is a chunk overdue to change matters for players who've been using it for some time. Anchoring is much older than that, but; a number of you can do not forget a publish I did lower back in December approximately "Diegeling." I included a image of Leo Diegel anchoring a putter way back in 1924. Diegel won majors using the technique.

Of course, there's a concern that we'll enter a "Wild West" period with anchoring allowed in some events and not in others. If the PGA Tour decides to make a local rule allowing anchoring, we might see a time where you could use a belly putter in most PGA Tour events and the PGA Championship and possibly the Masters, but not in European Tour events, the US Open (run by the USGA), or the Open Championship (run by the R&A). And what about the Australasian, Sunshine, and Asian Tours? This could be a real mess.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I read in the article was this:

Stricker said information over the last few months has changed his view. He still doesn't like long putters, but doesn't like the idea of a rule -- not after the long putters have been allowed for the last 40 years.

"Information over the last few months has changed his view." That may end up being the biggest bone of contention, since the USGA and R&A say they decided to pursue the ban because of the information they had. What is the info that Stricker is referring to, and how is it different from the "official" info that started this whole debate? Whose facts are the REAL facts?

The battle lines are being drawn. It looks like more than putting strokes are going to be anchored!