It's the last year for players to anchor putters at Masters

Take one last look at the putting styles used by Adam Scott, Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer and Kevin Stadler this week in the Masters Tournament. They will be gone next year.

Starting Jan. 1, 2016, anchoring – which means the putter shaft touches a part of the body and prohibits a free swinging motion – will be banned by the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Augusta National Golf Club will also follow the ban.

Scott, Couples, Langer and Stadler are among the anchoring holdovers in this year’s Masters. Tim Clark would have joined them, but he withdrew last week because of an elbow injury.

Some prominent players who anchored last season – major tournament champions Ernie Els, Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley – have changed to the conventional putter this season in anticipation of the ban. Matt Kuchar used a long putter in the past but didn’t anchor it.

Scott tried out a conventional putter at three of the four Florida Swing tournaments he played leading into the Masters. He didn’t like what he called mixed results, especially at his last tournament, at Bay Hill. He needed 65 putts on the weekend, including 33 in a third-round 69.

For the 72 holes, he had 128 putts and missed 11 putts within 10 feet of the hole – including five misses inside 5 feet.

“I’ve got no worries,” he said about the switch back to the broomstick putter, which he used in winning the 2013 Masters. “I’ve been doing it for the last four years. It’s no problem at all.”

Scott said the switch back to the long putter “just seemed like the sensible thing to do. I hadn’t practiced with the short putter at all. I just took it out and played at Doral, Tampa Bay and Bay Hill and there was mixed results. Obviously, my putting was great with the long putter. I’m not here to just see what happens; I’m here to get the job done and I think the odds with the long putter are better because I’ve used it the last four years.”

He said the three weeks with the shorter putter weren’t a loss.

“If you call the last few weeks a bit of an experiment, it was good to learn some things about what I was doing and what I think about in my principles of putting,” he said.

And he’s not worried about giving up his broomstick yet.

“I’ve got time up my sleeve and it’s a bit of a process, and that’s fine,” he said.

Langer, 57, plans to anchor until he isn’t allowed to any more. He’s been quoted as saying 17 percent of golfers in the world anchor, noting that if it was such a big advantage, more golfers would use it.

Since the Champions Tour season ends in early November and starts back up in late January, Langer said that time period should be long enough for him to get used to the short putter for 2016.

The switch from the long putter to conventional might benefit Simpson this year, according to his caddie, Paul Tesori. In three starts at Augusta National, Simpson has tied for 44th place and missed two cuts, respectively.

“The exciting thing for us I think it’s going to give us a much better chance at Augusta,” Tesori said. “He’s always struggled at Augusta putting. He’s hit the ball fine there in his three trips. Putting has really been a struggle. We’re both excited to kind of go there now with a little different weapon. Maybe something that is more feel-oriented.”

Tesori is thrilled about the rule change. He has tried to get Simpson to change for years. It finally happened in late November, before they went to the Dunlop Phoenix tournament in Japan when Simpson broke his putter into two pieces and showed them to Tesori at his house before their flight overseas.

“He will tell you what I think: Webb has always struggled with his stroke,” Tesori said. “He had what I considered a very poor putting stroke with the belly putter. He knows that. Though he anchored it, it moved a little bit when he putted. The putter kind of went in and shut. He toed a lot of his putts and cut across it. His stroke is better, it’s more straight back and straight through. The putter stays a lot more square. It’s mechanically a lot better putting stroke.”

Simpson said he feels good about the change.

“I’m glad I went ahead and switched and we’re improving each week, which is most important,” he said. “I think it’s going to help” on the bentrgrass Augusta National greens.

“I think putting with a belly putter on those greens has really held me back the first three years.”

Tesori understands why his boss didn’t want to switch. He’d been doing it for nearly 11 years.

“You’ve had a lot of success – four-time All-American at Wake Forest, won a major (2012 U.S. Open) and four golf tournaments, second on the money list, four straight Ryder Cup and President Cup teams.”

The change could be tougher for players on the Champions Tour like Couples and Langer. Especially Langer, who has been anchoring since 1996.

“It will be interesting to see,” Tesori said. “I almost feel bad even more for them than I do for these guys who poured a lot of hard work into it on the PGA Tour. They’ve poured a lot of hard work into it because they’ve got young bodies. Fred (Couples) has been a guy with chronic back problem and he’s still putting with the belly putter so I don’t know what’s going to happen.”