Once upon a time every professional golfer looked the same on the greens. Their grips were conventional and their putters looked like, well, putters, rather than broomsticks or garden equipment.
That was then, and this is now. The tournaments that played out on the PGA, Champions and Nationwide Tours this weekend told the tale.
Jim Furyk won the Verizon Heritage at the Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, using the cross-handed grip that he's stuck with all his career. Furyk tried it many years ago, he liked it, and he's won 15 PGA Tour events, including the 2003 U.S. Open, with it. His win at Harbour Town was further evidence that a cross-handed grip is one way of keeping the fingers quiet at impact on the putting stroke.
Then there was the Champions Tour event in Lutz, Fla. It's called the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am, and Bernhard Langer won. He won without playing what was supposed to be today's final round, because heavy rain ended any chance of getting the round in.
Now, Langer is probably the primary example of a golfer who has battled with the putting yips and overcome them. He's overcome the yips at least four times in his career. He's an advocate of the long putter, also called the broomstick. He anchors the grip end of the putter against his chest and he tames his hands, wrists and fingers, and he makes putts.
Langer won the 1985 and 1993 Masters, on those scary greens at the Augusta National Golf Club. Enough said. Maybe everybody should go to the long putter. It promotes a pendulum stroke, which, supposedly, has less margin of error than a stroke that swings.
But wait. Tom Watson, who finished second in last July's Open Championship and tied for 18th in the Masters last week, thinks the long putter should be declared illegal. "It's not a stroke of golf,"
he says of the putting style that results from having one end of the putter fixed.
So Watson sticks with the conventional putter. He missed a putt of about six feet on the last green at the Open, of course. The putt was not pretty. But you have to hand it to Watson. He's 60 and he's still playing excellent golf, even against players more than half his age.
He does it the old way. Watson has won eight majors the old way.
Three-time major champion Nick Price, meanwhile, changed not long ago to the long putter and has been contending regularly on the Champions Tour. He says the long putter has made him confident on the greens after too long a spell feeling he couldn't make putts.
This brings us to the Nationwide Tour's Fresh Charity Classic at the TPC Stonebrae in Hayward, Calif. Brantford, Ont.'s David Hearn is a superb ball-striker, but he's struggled on the greens. Hearn has gone to the long putter and worked with his swing coach Ralph Bauer to get used to it.
Hearn putted beautifully while shooting 64-65-69-67 to finish second by a shot to Fresno, Calif.'s Kevin Chappell in the Fresh Charity.
Well, he putted beautifully until he didn't. Hearn missed putts inside six feet on the 15th and 16th holes to lose the one-shot lead he held over Chappell. Still, he'll come away feeling he's done the right thing in going to the long putter.
There you go, the long and the short of putting. These days, a threesome of tour players might feature three wildly different putters and three odd-looking grips-you've heard of the claw, certainly.
Somebody once said that the man who can putt is a match for anybody and the man who can't putt is a match for nobody. No wonder there are so many ways to get the ball into the hole. Or to try to, anyway.