Is the R&A Anchored in Reality?

What does the R&A do all day?

I’ve been known to miss a putt or two but I’m missing this R&A / USGA anchoring issue by a mile. And there’s a bloody great hole involved here too… likely in the reasoning behind wanting to push for the ban on anchoring.

Golf’s ruling bodies risk becoming a laughing stock over the issue of anchored putting strokes. There is a flaw in arguing about the fairness of the game. R&A CEO Peter Dawson told Golf Digest: “Our conclusion is that anchored strokes threaten to supplant traditional strokes, which, with all their frailties, are integral to the long-standing character of our sport.”

This is disingenuous because the utterance comes after 15 Tour wins in the last two years with belly and broom-handled putters having been in play.

For players it’s comparable to being caught driving drunk and the police finding you are indeed unfit to drive, then telling you to be on your way and that your trial will come to convict you in future. Meantime, Drive carefully, y’all.

For manufacturers and others with a vested interest in this hardware it represents a waste of investment. Worse, it makes a mockery of the R&A’s very vetting process that legislates over the legality of products, accessories and so forth as to whether they comply with the rules and/or spirit of the game of golf, or actively contravene rules and conventions.

It’s absurd.

But with any written constitution, studied and empirical analysis of every linguistic or textual nuance by clever folk will invariably find loopholes, this is where common sense must play a part. Golf is not an ancient, druidical ceremony confined to the glens of Brigadoon; it’s a living, breathing game and it must adapt to enhance people’s enjoyment and love of the game – within reason. God knows, when economic hard times put golf businesses under threat it’s not the time to introduce shibboleths that have no rightful place.

A common sense approach could be informed by simple interrogation of the facts. Is anchored putting such a revolutionary advantage? And if it is, why has everybody not adopted it more quickly and in greater numbers? There’s plenty of precedent.

In 1995, a Liverpool-based process engineer and golf amateur hand-made the world’s first groove-faced putter in his garden shed. A little over 10 years later, Harold Swash’s game-changing C-Groove Putters were #2 on Tour under the brand name Yes! Golf. These putters and their inherent technical innovation were rigorously tested and vetted by the R&A before being approved as legitimate enhancements to the game of golf and its values.

Even at the apogee of its glory days in the professional game, Yes! Golf could never boast that every player in the field carried the famous black/white/yellow gripped putter in his or her bag. It was and remains arguably the single most important technical innovation in a generation of golfing engineers with few serious detractors, but golfers (professional and amateur) always used their own judgement and choice over what felt right for them.

And irrespective of the number of Tour wins and player endorsements, or the brand’s soaraway popularity among club golfers all over the world, C-Groove engineering was never called into question. (Interestingly, Yes! Golf never had a strategy for paying professionals to use the putters. With very few exceptions – mainly to experiment on ROI – Tour players used the putters because they were damn good, and for that reason only.)

In between then and now, has the R&A lost its way and its right to arbitrate what benefits and harms the game? Or has it just lost its marbles? Giving the R&A / USGA the benefit of the doubt in conceding they might not be treating us all like idiots, the game and institution of golf still has sufficient detractors to render this entire episode as risible and a monstrous fuss about nothing.

For the R&A to question this technology so far into its global usage, AND to say a ban will take several years to come into effect brings us back to the drunk-driving analogy… You’re illegal now, but you carry on until we work out what to do with you.

What does the Royal & Ancient do all day…? It conjures up images of unhinged recluses indulging in over-thinking, and it is utter nonsense.