Q school is off and running.
"It's aye the pooter," Dennis Bethune, a Scotsman who lives in Dornoch, once said. He was referring to the importance the putter plays in a tournament. These days he could say, "It's aye the long pooter," meaning that golfers with long putters are doing okay, thank you very much.
Keegan Bradley, of course, won the PGA Championship with a long putter. He's not the only golfer to win a PGA Championship in recent days. Ken Tarling, a seasoned pro who runs a golf academy in Stouffville, Ont., won the Simmlands Ontario PGA Seniors Championship Tuesday at Maple Downs Golf and Country Club. He won by holing an off-the-charts birdie putt from 35-feet on the 18th hole, the first of his sudden-death playoff against Burlington, Ont. pro Brian Hutton.
A nice crowd was gathered on the hill overlooking the 18th hole at Maple, as members know the course (I'm a member). Hutton, the 2010 Canadian PGA Club Professional Championship winner, had gone seven-under-par the last 10 holes to reach four-under 140 for the 36-hole tournament. Tarling was still on the course, and stuffed his approach on the last hole to three feet. He made the putt to get into the playoff. Tarling, by the way, won the Mr. Lube-Canadian PGA Seniors' Championship last month.
Tarling's putt in the playoff looked rather difficult, to say the least. It was up and over a ridge, and would break hard to the right. Hutton had hit his approach within six feet of the hole, pin-high. But Tarling, like Bradley two days before, had that magic weapon—the long putter. More and more players are taking advantage of the lax rule that allows golfers to anchor the putter against the chest. It works, so they use it. Can't blame them for that.
Tarling anchored the grip end of the putter against his sternum, and made his stroke. The ball rolled, turned, and fell into the hole. Irv Lightstone, a man who knows the game and the course, and who had been the head professional at Maple for some 40 years before retiring, nearly fell over in his cart.
"That putt can't be made," Lightstone said. But Lightstone, perhaps, wasn't familiar with what a long putter can do for a suffering putter. He's old school. Last seen, he was still shaking his head in amazement at seeing Tarling's putt made.
Now came Hutton, using a short putter. Conventional, a proper stroke of golf. Tom Watson sniffs at the long putter and thinks it shouldn't be allowed. "It's not a stroke of golf," he's said. "Tis true, 'tis pity.
So what happened? Well, Hutton missed the putt. Maybe he needed the broomstick putter. That was that. Tarling had won his fourth consecutive Ontario PGA Seniors. At the prize presentation, he received a cheque for $2,000. He said the win meant a lot to him. A disciple of the late Moe Norman, he was aware that the ball-striking wizard who never took more than a second or two to hit a putt, had won the tournament four straight years. He was the only golfer to do that.
Meanwhile, your golf correspondent was, like Lightstone, also shaking his head. Out on the course he'd seen Whitby, Ont. Dan Clark carrying both a long and a short putter. Clark's reasoning is that golfers carry four wedges and don't use a wedge nearly as often as a putter. So why not carry a couple of putters?
On the 16th green, Clark hit a putt from 35' with his short putter. The ball rolled four feet by the hole. He then went to the side of the green and picked up his long putter. He missed his par putt. Whoops, the long putter isn't a magical putter all the time, apparently.
"He's now conversing with himself," Bob Panasik, the Windsor, Ont. super-senior and still super golfer who will turn 70 in October, said at that moment. Panny had shot 75-75. He was right. Clark was conversing with himself.
The tournament soon ended, and Tarling was asked how long he'd used a long putter.
"I just went to it this week," he said. "The other one went bad."
Meanwhile, here's what my fellow Maple member Irving Feldman told me Tuesday about using the long putter.
"For what it's worth, I've been putt(z)ing around with a belly putter for about five rounds and it seems to be working for me at this time in my golf life-the yips that had entered my hands and brain with the conventional putter are gone and I hope, never to return."
Them's fighting words from a man whose short pooter had gone sour.
As Dennis Bethune said, and as Bradley, Tarling and Feldman would agree, it's aye the pooter, and, more and more, the long pooter. That's a fact.
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein