Have you guys seen this yet?
http://chronicle.augusta.com/sports/golf/2013-02-28/position-anchoring-ban-underscores-pga-tours-arrogance
Here's an excerpt:
Much of the logic used to defend the anchored putting status quo is reminiscent of the classic quote on social safety nets by “Coach” Craig T. Nelson.
“I’ve been on food stamps and welfare – did anybody help me out? No!” Nelson told Glenn Beck in 2009 in one of the all-time twisted thoughts.
The anchoring equivalent came from the lips of Harrison Frazar, a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board that helped convince Finchem to make his public declaration against the anchoring ban on behalf of the tour’s players.
“I’ve used long putters; I’ve used belly putters; I’ve used short and regular; I’ve used ultra short with fat grips; I’ve used all of it,” Frazar said recently. “And with the exception of helping me just simply get the ball in the hole from a foot-and-a-half, I didn’t notice a whole lot of difference. It never really made me a better putter.”
The straw man arguments used to defend anchoring have done little to dissuade the purists who see anchoring as anathema to the spirit of a true golf swing.
They’ve decried a lack of empirical data to support the theory that anchoring is beneficial, ignoring the obvious anecdotal information that struggling putters have converted for obvious reasons to combat the yips. They’ve trotted out the absurd statement that “if it was so much better everyone would be doing it,” as if already top putters would even consider making changes to something that isn’t broken.
They’ve asserted that a ban could drive away golfers in a game struggling to grow when all evidence points to cost, time and access as the biggest inhibiting factors regarding participation.
Golf’s governing bodies aren’t thinking about pro players or specific constituencies, but the overall good of the game and what defines a traditional stroke. Woods stands with the USGA’s Mike Davis and R&A’s Peter Dawson on this.
“I still feel that all 14 clubs should be swung, it shouldn’t be anchored,” Woods said. “That hasn’t changed at all.”
While many players agree with him, the tour still opted to side with its growing ranks of anchorers. In a grand display of institutional arrogance, some of the several hundred pros who make up the game’s elite believe that they know what is best for the millions who play the game in the rest of the world. Golf revolves around them, of course. They are the center of the universe. Their precious bank accounts and means of acquiring wealth are the only thing that matters.
To heck with the folks who have been codifying the rules since the game began long before “professional” was considered a respectable word in golf.
“The real issue is, why do people who don’t play golf professionally, get to make rules for guys who do?” one tour pro was quoted as saying anonymously after players met with USGA executive director Davis in January at Torrey Pines.
Another unidentified peer countered that sentiment.
“Guys have lost the fact that the rules aren’t written for just pros or 200 guys, but for millions of people,” said another pro. “In my opinion, the height of arrogance is thinking the Rules of Golf should be tailored to us.”
