On Jan. 20, the Sunday before he was scheduled to compete in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, Adam Scott was up the road in the beachside community of Encinitas, Calif., at Scotty Cameron’s putting studio. There, Scott stroked putts with an assortment of putters in his seemingly never-ending quest to find a reliable replacement for the broomstick-length putter he wielded with the now-banned anchoring method on the way to winning the 2013 Masters and reaching world No. 1 in 2014.
As Scott patiently waited for Jordan Spieth to finish going through his paces in the studio before the pair headed out to play a casual practice round together, his curiosity got the better of him. Leaning against a wall, Scott spied an arm-lock style putter. He grabbed it for a test drive, pressing the grip against the inside of his left forearm, and holed a string of putts. Call it serendipity. After hours of crunching numbers and being captured by high-speed cameras while testing everything but an arm-lock model, Scott inserted the rogue putter into his bag and the magic continued during an on-course audition. He drained a 30-foot putt on his first attempt.
“Paul Vizanko (director of putting studio operations) and Scotty Cameron just rolled their eyes like, of course you do,” Scott says.
He continued to pour in putts with such frequency that Spieth even commented that the 38-year-old Australian was putting with great conviction.
“I thought, if Jordan says that I should definitely use it,” Scott says.
Scott made the arm-lock model his “gamer” that week and putted well enough to finish second to Justin Rose, his best result in nearly three years. But he still had moments of doubt and even switched his grip back to the claw mid-round one day.
Two weeks later, Scott’s experiment resumed when he partnered with surfer pal Kelly Slater at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where the poa annua greens can be unpredictable, as Scott put it kindly. Like Scott, Slater used an arm-lock putter that week.
Furyk finished T9 at Honda and was runner-up to Rory McIlroy at the Players. He’s not the only veteran enjoying a renaissance on the greens using an arm-lock putter. Lucas Glover has improved from 154th to 78th in strokes gained putting and Cink from 171st to 23rd.
“He rolled the ball better than anyone in our group and probably as well as anyone in the field that week,” Scott says. “I thought, it’s Kelly Slater. He’s a really good surfer but he’s not that good of a golfer. It must be the putter.”
The very next week Scott switched to an L.A.B. Golf Directed Force arm-lock mallet putter. Throw in the fact that Scott also was one of the early adopters of keeping the flagstick in the hole without penalty (which became legal on Jan. 1) and it may be hard to pinpoint one single reason for his improved putting this season. But the results are undeniable. Scott ranks No. 14 in strokes gained putting this season (+.680), an improvement of nearly a full stroke on the field per round compared to 2017-18 when he finished T-165 (-.285). To Scott, the arm-lock stroke has been a savior on the greens.
“If you try it, it is incredibly stable and I was blown away by how good it felt and, I hate to say, how anchored it is,” Scott says.
Scott was among several golfers who expressed their discontent when the USGA and R&A banned the anchored putting stroke beginning in 2016. For the careers of those pros who made a living using belly and long putters, it was the equivalent of being left in the middle of a desert without water. The arm-lock style, however, was deemed to conform because nothing is anchored to the butt of the putter grip.
Initially, Scott switched to the claw, in which the grip is pinched “claw-like” by the thumb and forefinger of the right hand. With it, he won back-to-back PGA Tour titles in early 2016. It looked as if the switch would be a blip on the radar for Scott.
“I joked with Adam and said (USGA CEO) Mike Davis just totally screwed us,” recalls Brandt Snedeker, one of the tour’s top putters. “He’s finally figured out how to putt and now he’s going to win everything.”
But those were the most recent of Scott’s 13 tour victories, largely because his putter has been more foe than friend.
“He’s got 13 clubs right where he wants them and one club that has him strangled,” Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee said last summer as Scott’s world ranking dipped to No. 76 in July.
Scott’s radical improvement on the greens is similar to that enjoyed last season by Webb Simpson after he moved to an arm-lock-style putter and a claw grip. Simpson had used a belly putter for 11 years since his days as a collegian at Wake Forest University. But he accepted the rule change and broke the belly putter he’d used to win the 2012 U.S. Open over his knee prior to the start of the 2015 season, a full year before the ban would be enforced. Without his crutch, Simpson plummeted to 174th in strokes gained putting in 2015, and 177th in 2016. He hit rock bottom at the 2016 Barclays, taking nine three-putts in the first two rounds. Afterwards, he and Paul Tesori hashed it out for an hour. The caddie convinced his pro to search for a solution.
Never underestimate the creativity of a desperate putter. At the 2017 Players Championship, Simpson made the switch to an arm-lock putter and combined it with a claw grip at the advice of Tim Clark, another player whose career went into a tailspin after the anchoring ban. At the time, Simpson was ranked No. 192 in strokes gained putting. A year later, at the 2018 Players, he was No. 1 for the week, ending his four-year victory drought and improving to No. 5 for the season (+.692).
“It’s nothing short of miraculous,” Tesori said.
At this year’s Players, Jim Furyk nearly rode a hot putter to the title. Furyk is still a newbie with arm-lock putting and conceded that he struggled to adapt to it at first. It wasn’t until Simpson stopped on the putting green at the Honda Classic in late February and gave Furyk two quick tips on the finer points of his technique that Furyk began to feel comfortable.
“It was the way he grips it,” Furyk says. “He said, ‘There’s two ways to grip it with your left arm’ – Bryson (DeChambeau) and Stewart (Cink) do it one way, he and (Matt Kuchar) do it another. I struggled to get in the same position say like Bryson and Stewart Cink and some of the guys get but I could do it like Webb did it. And it felt really comfortable immediately. … I thought, I’m going to give it a try.”
Furyk finished T9 at Honda and was runner-up to Rory McIlroy at the Players. He’s not the only veteran enjoying a renaissance on the greens using an arm-lock putter. Lucas Glover has improved from 154th to 78th in strokes gained putting and Cink from 171st to 23rd.
But not everyone using an arm-lock putter has conquered his putting woes. Rod Pampling is ranked 213th, a k a dead last, and he’s one of only two players to lose more than one stroke to the field.
Despite leading the field at the 2018 BMW Championship in strokes gained putting en route to his fourth career victory and first in the post-belly-putter era (since the 2012 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational), Keegan Bradley has backpedaled this season, dogged again by a balky putter. He ranks 209th.
Putting always has been an individualistic art. Stand by the practice putting green at any PGA Tour event and prepare to see scores of unorthodox putting grips. In 2011, Kuchar was doing a clinic at the Vintage Club in Indian Wells, Calif., before the Desert Classic. Dave Stockton and son Dave Jr., renowned putting instructors, were there too. Despite coming off his best year as a professional in 2010 during which he topped the tour money list using a cross-handed putting grip, Kuchar still saw room for improvement. He asked the Stocktons to watch him hit a few putts. Struggling to adopt their technique, Kuchar choked down on a conventional-length putter so that the grip touched the inside of his left wrist. It was a Eureka moment.
“It gave me a big forward press that reminded me of how I putted as a kid. It felt great,” he says. “I was making putt after putt and tried it the next day at home.”
He adjusted the length and loft of the putter, and shared with his wife his plan to employ this new style of putting. He established a six-week trial period and if his putting wasn’t demonstrably better, he would abandon what, to others, seemed like a fool’s errand.
“Don’t let me be an idiot,” he told his wife.
Kuchar has been legally bracing the shaft against his left forearm ever since. The arm-lock style has become synonymous with his name and often is referred to as the “Kuchar grip,” but he didn’t invent it. That distinction belongs to Bernhard Langer, who preceded Kuchar by anchoring the putter against his left forearm by nearly 20 years. It became Langer’s salvation from a case of the putting yips in the early 1990s. He used this style to win the 1993 Masters.
Eventually, Langer switched to a long putter and continues to wield it to great effect post-anchoring ban by floating it away from his chest – but not without generating controversy. For the last several years, Kuchar says Langer has approached him on the practice putting green at the Masters, grabbed his Bettinardi putter and said, “If I have to go away from the long putter, I’ll be doing it this way.”
Kuchar is used to players toying with the idea of copying his method. Several pros have asked him how to putt using his unorthodox grip, but those conversations haven’t led to many conversions. Kuchar says the real trendsetter on tour is DeChambeau, who has won five times since switching to a 39-inch SIK Pro C-Series Armlock putter, crediting the club for much of his success.
DeChambeau ranked No. 194 in strokes gained putting before he swapped putters in March 2017, and improved to No. 145 by season’s end. For the 2017-18 season, DeChambeau ranked No. 32.
Count Bubba Watson among the pros who wondered if an arm-lock putter could turn DeChambeau into a wizard on the greens, why not me.
“I’m just trying to be like Bryson,” said Watson, who debuted an arm-lock style putter at this year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open and finished T-4 despite an inauspicious start with the new club (-1.131 strokes gained putting). “If it helps me get one percent better, then I’m better.”
School is still out for Watson, who is 168th in strokes gained putting this season after ranking 115th last season.
With more pros embracing the arm-lock putting style – and winning with it – it seems only a matter of time before someone wins a major using one. That would further legitimize the technique in the eyes of recreational golfers and could set off a consumer frenzy comparable to the belly and long putter craze triggered by Bradley, Simpson and Scott winning majors. That’s because whatever stigma used to be attached to alternative putting styles is gone. All that matters now is how many, not how.
“When I came out with the broomstick people thought I had lost the plot,” Scott says. “But once I started making putts, there were 15 guys trying broomsticks the week after I finished second at the 2011 Masters.”
Expect at least that many to pick up the nearest arm-lock putter leaning against a wall if Scott wins again soon.