Talk about taking the shine off a win. Dan Bradbury lifted the Open de France trophy – the biggest victory of his burgeoning DP World Tour career – and wildly inaccurate accusations have been flying ever since.
The charge, for which social media has been judge, jury, and executioner, is that the Wakefield golfer is anchoring his broom-handle-style putter during his stroke.
Bradbury has denied the allegations, saying his stroke is “within the rules“. There is absolutely no reason to doubt him.
The problem, though, for Bradbury and others who have fallen under suspicion – Bernhard Langer cops a lot of grief for the same thing – is that the law is an ass.
It’s vague, grey, and opens up players to abuse. It’s time it was sorted out.
Before I get stuck into what bugs me so much about the anchoring rule as it stands, let’s just recap what 10.1b says in the book.
When you make a stroke, you must not anchor the club either by directly holding it or a gripping hand against any part of the body.
You can’t do it indirectly either, so by using what the rule calls an “anchor point”. That means “holding a forearm against any part of the body to use a gripping hand as a stable point around which the other hand may swing the club”.
With me so far? Good, because it’s about to get murky.
That same rule also says you CAN hold the club or a gripping hand against a hand or forearm (think Bryson DeChambeau).
It also says if the club, gripping hand or forearm “merely touches” a player’s body or clothing during the stroke, “without being held against the body”, then there isn’t a breach of the rule.
So you can’t hold the club against the body, but if it merely touches it or clothing, that’s fine.
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The anchoring rule is convoluted enough that it merits further discussion in THREE clarifications. One, 10.2b/2 says deliberate contact with clothing during a stroke is breach of the rule.
But another, 10.1b/3, says inadvertent contact with clothing during a stroke is not a breach and that “touching an article of clothing with the club or gripping hand and making a stroke is allowed”.
It adds this might happen if a player “wears loose fitting clothes or rain gear” or “has a physical size or build that causes the arms naturally to rest close to the body”.
It might occur if the player “holds the club extremely close to the body”. It might also happen if it “for some other reason touches their clothing in making a stroke”. Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
The anchoring rule isn’t fit for purpose. But what’s the solution?
Who decides what is deliberate and what is accidental? The player? The referee? The fans? Don’t expect photographic evidence to help. It’ll look like the club is planted into the chest.
How is a referee supposed to unpack that? Even ‘deliberate’ has its own quirks. Say, for example, you thought your hand or club might come into contact with clothing when making the stroke. Isn’t that then deliberate? Because you’d accepted it could happen? Even if you’d wanted to avoid it?
Ultimately, we’re using first principles. We’re asking players to play by the rules, in the spirit of the game, and to apply their own penalties if they breach one.
It’s down to you lot.
In an interview with NCG back in 2019, David Rickman, then the R&A’s rules chief, said the anchoring rule had largely achieved its purpose.
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“Are there elements of it that people don’t like?” he said. “We understand there are, but we write the rules for people to abide by and we believe in the integrity of players.
“That has served us well here and I think it continues to help us when you have tricky areas of the rules such as anchoring.”
But that feels like a cop out, and one which I reckon was arrived at because there wasn’t the will to ban the long putter outright.
For those of us who play the game, we’ve got to believe the rule works and have the confidence to apply it as stated in the rule book. That’s because they’re not just written for the professional game. They are written for everyone.
Could we really say there is widespread faith in the anchoring rule as it is? What we’ve got right now is periodic outrage and reputations dragged through the mud whenever people think there is a hint of it. It does the game, the rules, and the players no good.
After eight years, it’s a complete mess and it needs to be changed. So what would I do if I ran the rules department?
I’d get rid of the long putter altogether. There’s already a Local Rule restricting the length of other clubs, among a host of other equipment restrictions which are widely employed in the pro game.
This would solve the issue at the highest level. If you can’t have a long driver of your choosing, why should you be allowed a long putter?
But if that’s a non-starter, and doesn’t address anchoring at club level, then at the very least the rule needs to state there has to be a clearly visible gap throughout the stroke.
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If it brushes clothing, or the body, or rests against anything on its way through, then it is a breach. It doesn’t matter if it’s accidental or deliberate.
There are players who do this already, and I accept it means some would have to put their long putters out to pasture because they couldn’t make the revised stroke work.
But altering the rule has to be better for a player than waking up in the morning to another social media storm – and websites and papers full of headlines.
Now have your say on anchoring
What do you think of the anchoring rule in golf? Does it need to be changed? Should long putters be banned? Let us know by leaving a comment on X.
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