TaylorMade-adidas Golf has established itself as being the industry’s leading metal woods company in part by being brash. Earlier this year, TMaG President Mark King said the USGA’s then-proposed ban on players anchoring long putters and belly putters against their bodies would be the organization’s demise.
Fred Couples
The USGA and R&A today officially announced the ban will go into effect in 2016.
Anticipating the decision, TMaG Executive Vice President Sean Toulon said yesterday he believes the rule (14-1b) doesn’t help the growth
of the game moving forward and could even see the end of careers of two storied players – Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer.
Couples, one of the more popular players in history of golf, uses a belly putter on the PGA Tour and Champions Tour; Langer, a two-time
Masters champion, has won 18 times on the Champions Tour, with many of those victories coming with a long putter.
“I would say there is zero chance in 2016 that those two players will play,” Toulon sad yesterday at the International Network of Golf
Conference at Reunion Resort near Orlando. “No chance. They can’t physically putt with a short putter.”
