Long Putter Is the Topic of Debate at Masters

Tom Watson and Arnold Palmer are golf traditionalists.

They say they’d never use the curious and controversial over-long putter that has caused such a stir on the PGA Tour this season.

“It isn’t golf,” said Palmer.

“It isn’t a golf stroke,” said Watson, and added: “If I were the emperor of the world, I wouldn’t allow it.”

Ray Floyd is a realist.

“I’m old enough I’ve learned never to say never,” Floyd said.

Rocco Mediate is a pragmatist.

He uses that peculiar, 49-inch long putter for one reason and one reason only -- it works.

In the space of a few months, it helped turn him from a career mediocrity into the most consistent player on the American tour.

In five previous seasons, Mediate rarely got into title contention, and found a way to take himself out of it when he did.

He began working with the long putter during a two-month break last winter, hasn’t finished lower than 15th since then and has collected more than $400,000 already this young season.

And, with his career-first victory in Doral a couple of months ago, the likeable Mediate gained his first invitation to the Masters.

“I’m not getting as much heat from the other guys now as I was early in the year,” Mediate observed.

But the critics and the purists and the traditionalists are not convinced. Watson is among the more outspoken.

Although the five-time British Open champion is -- by his own admission -- struggling with a case of the yips, he said he’s opposed to the use of the putter that has proved so beneficial to players on the Senior Tour.

“It isn’t a golf stroke,” the 41-year-old Watson repeated.

He demonstrated, holding an imaginary putter with his left hand against his chest and placing his right several inches lower.

“You just pull it back,” he said, moving his right hand, “and it swings like a pendulum. It swings of its own accord. It isn’t even a stroke.”

Mediate just shrugged.

When questioned about his putting problems, Watson also frequently replies: “It isn’t the putter, it’s the puttee.”

That very well could be the case with Mediate.

He argues that a player can’t perform any action well unless he practices it. Mediate is subject to back spasms. Crouching over a conventional putter for an extended practice period brings on the spasms. Standing upright with the long putter does not produce spasms, so he can practice more.

Regardless of the reason, the long putter has been a critical part of the short-game success that has turned Mediate’s life around and stamped him as something more than a curiousity in the 55th Masters that begins Thursday.

It is there, on the glass-slick greens of Augusta National, with their notorious undulations and slopes and idiosyncricies, that Rocco and his putter face their greatest challenge.

“I’m excited about it,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.

“A lot of people are paying a lot more attention to me now than they ever did before; interviews and everything. I think I’ve handled it pretty well. I haven’t let it get to me.

“And my game doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere. It’s still with me. And if some part of it does decided to go away, well, I have a lot of confidence that my short game can take up the slack.”