Adam Scott in action today. Picture: Brett Costello Source: The Daily Telegraph
Adam Scott lines up a putt at The Lakes Golf Club today. Picture: Brett Costello Source: The Daily Telegraph
ADAM Scott, a man no stranger to relationship headlines, looks set to dump the broomstick putter.
In a move that could conceivably decide the 2012 Australian Open, Australia's premier golfer yesterday practised without the controversial club that has revived him as a force in world golf.
Only a week after golfing officialdom promised to outlaw the broomstick putter by 2016, Scott has ditched his own long wand in favour of a shortened version of the same club.
Paired with American great Tom Watson over 11 practice holes yesterday, the 32-year-old Queenslander worked the greens with a new stick that finished some six to eight centimetres short of his midriff at address.
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Still longer than a regular putter, the club also requires the world No.7 to maintain the 'claw' grip accompanying broomsticks - thereby causing a minimum of change to his putting technique. Importantly, however, the club isn't anchored to his body like the one offending golfing purists.
Yet while Scott's relationships have long been fodder for we vultures of the press - most notably his pairing with tennis stunner Ana Ivanovic - the Aussie glamour boy was strangely silent when quizzed on his latest potential split.
Asked if he planned to ditch the broomstick after finishing his round with Watson, Scott instead headed straight for the locker room saying only that he had "commitments".
However The Daily Telegraph understands the new club, which would could prove quite the gamble for Scott if used at The Lakes this week, is a shortened version of his beloved broomstick.
Put simply, it still allows Scott to keep that same body angle through the stroke. The club head is also the same.
Despite securing 16 of his 19 wins with a traditional putter, Scott clinched the Australian Masters last month using a broomstick putter.
Notably, three of the past five major championship winners have triumphed using long putters - including Ernie Els, who capitalised on Scott's stumble at The Open in July.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday morning, US great Watson was far more expansive on the issue.
"The broomstick stroke is not a stroke of golf," he said. "That's not a stroke but it makes it easier to play. My son Michael, with a conventional putting stroke, he couldn't make it from two feet half the time. But he went to a belly putter and he makes everything.
"The game is fun to him now, so there lies the danger: Do we take the ability for people to have fun away?
"Do we go to two sets of rules, where some people can use (long putters) in certain competitions, but the PGA Tour maybe can't?"
Asked about Els' use of the long stick, he added: "I thought Ernie summed up perfectly after he won last year's Open championship.
"He was asked: 'Why did you go with the long putter Ernie?' He said: 'I'm cheating like the rest of them are'."
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