Texian

Absolutely the truth. I can't believe it took the golf experts on this forum 10 pages of posts to finally get around to Raphaël Jacquelin .

I was playing one afternoon with a District Judge in Texas. He broke a window. "I'm going to go over and offer to pay for the damage," he said. "But I don't have to."

I'll bet he found them under a bridge. Isn't that where trolls live?

Agree, but what I really doubt is all the omniscient posters who just "know" he never had a lesson.

Just because he was on a college golf team doesn't mean he's had a lesson. A lot of college golf coaches are little more than bus drivers. Here's what Bubba's website says: "More interestingly, the only golf lesson Bubba received was from his father at a very young age and he has not had a lesson since. He is truly a self-taught golfer."

From his website: "Although Bubba was a standout left-handed pitcher in high school, he chose to stick with golf and received a golf scholarship to the University of Georgia where he helped lead the Bulldogs to an SEC title in 2000. In 2001, a year away from graduating, Bubba decided to turn professional and went on to lead the Tour in driving distance multiple years in a row."

http://www.usga.org/uploadedImages/USGAHome/rules/UNDERSTANDING%20ANCHORED%20STROKES.jpg

Agree on both, and a good place for me to end my part in this discussion, which started as a way to remind golfers that there are positive aspects to the anchored putter ban, and not to re-hash something that we can't do anything about. The positive aspects--you can still use long putters with minor modifications to your stroke, fewer of your opponents will be using them, and supposedly they're less expensive.

Not enough. The equipment engineers are still way ahead.

For the same reason that they don't do anything about some of the things that really need fixing--like club and ball technology that should be reined in to keep from making our courses obsolete and the game a mockery compared to how it was once played. The equipment industry is too powerful. They thought their stupid ruling would make long putters go away without having to fight that battle.

Decide for yourself if it's an "advantage," based on trends, including majors won and players switching to long putters. Most of those who switched probably anchored. Whether anchoring is an advantage or not should not be an issue. Pausing at the top of the backswing may or may not be an advantage. Some do it and most these days don't. But it shouldn't be outlawed. The ruling bodies said that "one or both elbows braced against body" or "forearms held against body without anchor point" would be legal with a short putter but "anchored point created by forearm" with a long putter would not be. "This is not an equipment rule," they maintained, but that's a lie. They just didn't like the look of long putters. I've got news for them. Mine's not going away, and I hope the tour players who were so successful with them make the minor adjustments needed so they don't have to stop using them either.

The fact is that the trend, as evidenced by tournament winners and numbers of golfers going to long putters, was toward long putters becoming a major factor among the pros, because it gave them an "advantage." Pros are funny that way. They look for any advantage they can get. This was too much for the dinosaurs who make the decisions "for the good of the game," and they blew it this time.

That's a good positive attitude, and I'm sure you've played against some good competition. But Keegan Bradley (2011 PGA Championship), Bill Haas (2011 Tour Championship), Webb Simpson (2012 U. S. Open), and Ernie Els (2012 British Open), put a lot of good players at a "disadvantage," whether they admitted it or not. And by the 2012 British Open, 27 percent of the field used long putters. That, obviously, drove the old-timers in the R&A; and USGA over the brink of insanity.

This shows just how unnecessary, stupid and unenforceable this rule is. Here's a scenario. Two players are tied on the last hole of their club championship match. They're pretty competitive and haven't really liked each other for years. One of them, the one with the long putter, putts, makes it, and apparently wins the match. His opponent, who is standing to his side, yells immediately--"Hey, that was an illegal stroke. Your hand was touching your chest." "Was not," says the apparent winner. "Well, maybe it was, just a little bit. But it wasn't intentional. And that's what the rule says it has to be, intentional." So they storm into the pro shop. You're the pro. What's your decision?

Thanks. Sorry if I offended anyone. But see, I'm doing it already. I am aware of that. The reason I've never anchored the hand or the forearm is that it seems to me that anchoring makes the pivot point less stable. Your body is not a rigid post, and trying to make it that way to avoid movement at the pivot point would cause more tension for me. An analogy would be that in shooting a handgun your front sight will move around on the target a bit, no matter how hard you try to make it perfect, and trying too hard will cause tension and make it move even more. Again, I realize that everyone is different and I'm just giving ideas that seem logical to me.