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Should Mickelson's new weapon really be banned?

Phil Mickelson raised eyebrows with his move to the belly putter © Getty Images

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In a fitting coincidence, in the same week Phil Mickelson - gasp! - turned to the belly putter to give himself an advantage on the greens, one minor European satellite tour decided the time had come to ban them.

Mickelson has never been confused as one of the greatest putters in the game (he has far too long a showreel of missed five-footers for that accolade), but he is regarded as one of the most natural 'flair' players in the game - a traditionalist who has stuck with the sleek, elegant and classical blade putter long after it has been dropped by almost every other professional around (Rhys Davies, an exquisite putter, is one of the only other high profile blade users).

To see him move to the belly putter raised eyebrows throughout the game.

"It's awkward to me," Mickelson acknowledged prior to the Deutsche Bank - where the new weapon had a limited effect. "But so many guys have had success with it that I thought I'd give it a try."

Indeed, in many ways it has been the year of said item (also known as the 'long putter') - especially after Adam Scott's revival and recent victory at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and the fact almost every player at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the US PGA Championship (including winner Keegan Bradley) appeared to be using one.

Scott, the Australian, has been notable for his move to the long putter - crediting it for his improvement into a player who has almost overnight become a major contender once again. He is a player who clearly sees an advantage in the design, which sees the longer handle anchor into a player's abdomen (or belly, for the less slim) to create an extra pivot point, making it harder for the hands to break and easy to keep a rhythm, consequently ensuring the putter's face remains square for much longer.

It's exactly this advantage that has led the wonderfully named Gecko Euro Pro Tour to ban all such putters, believing they are not in the spirit of the game.

"With the anchoring of the putter into a player's midriff, we feel this gives a player an unfair advantage over the rest of the competitors in the field, which goes against the ethos and spirit of the game," tour director Paul Netherton said.

The tour, evidently blessed with forward thinking organisers, is also looking into making every player in the field use the same ball. While this is easier for an organisation with limited commercial concerns to try and implement, it is nevertheless an interesting development.

Seve sentiment only lasts so long

The crowd show their support for Seve Ballesteros © PA Photos

• The Seve Trophy teams have been finalised this week - but the lineups for the two sides are as notable for who is not in attendance as those who are. The likes of Jamie Donaldson and Mark Foster may be delighted to have qualified for their first team tournament of real not, but the absence of heavy hitters like Rory McIlroy and Martin Kaymer.
  
  Both players have valid reasons not to participate - McIlroy to rest up ahead of a 12-week run of events, Kaymer to recover from recent illness - but neither are issues that couldn't have been put aside in more special circumstances (if it were a Ryder Cup year, for example).
• 
  There was a huge outpouring of emotion and grief, from players past and present, when Seve Ballesteros passed away earlier in the year. Yet, while some are attending the event that bears his name when they don't have to (Ian Poulter, who paid a fortune for one of the Spaniard's putters to help his charity cause), it is a shame that it is being diminished slightly by those who are not in attendance.
• Whether it is the players snubbing the event, or circumstances forcing a difficult decision - well that is another matter.

Will the bigger tours eventually follow suit? It seems doubtful, not least because manufacturers will apply pressure for design freedom to be retained (for this reason, a single ball is an absolute non-starter) and the simple fact that players using such putters don't receive an "unfair advantage" in the truest sense - the technology is open to everyone so players who opt against using the putter are making a clear choice.

In that example they are really disadvantaging themselves - and tennis wouldn't ban synthetic strings just because a select band of players insisted on gut.

It's not even clear whether belly putters do offer a distinct 'advantage' anyway. Watching Scott for any period of time, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that an increased quality from inside 10 feet has come at the cost of solid feel from long range, and the statistics bear that out.

The Australian is over one per cent better from inside five feet in 2011 than he was in 2010 (94.81% successful against 93.75%) and a notable 13% more successful from between five and 10 feet (59.38% against 46.55%).

Yet he is noticeably worse from longer range, going from one of the best distance putters in the game (ranked 17th and 24th in three key categories) to a relatively mediocre one (98th and 81st).

While without all the data it's hard to make precise conclusion, the trade-off between short and long putting proficiency may in fact mean the only overall benefit Scott is receiving from the putter is in his mind.

"This has absolutely freed up the rest of my game. It's certainly a different kind of confidence I have now when I walk onto a golf course," Scott said after his win at Firestone. "I feel like I can fall back on my putting if the long game is not there that day, and if it is there, I can really take advantage of it.

"It's a nice feeling to have a little confidence and consistency. I'm not too sure where I go from here if this doesn't pan out!"

In an age of sports psychologists and short game gurus on speed dial, it would be foolish to dismiss the subtle benefit of such an improved mindset. Then again, with so many tournaments these days won and lost from close range on the greens, even a marginal improvement in putting success can have a profound effect - maybe exactly the effect we've witnessed with Scott this year?

Webb Simpson, a man ranked 213th at the start of the year, is now up to world No. 14 after a deserved second win of the year at last week's Deutsche Bank. He brandishes the belly putter but that can't be credited for his sudden rise - he's an 'early adopter' who has used it for more than half a decade.

"I tried the belly putter honestly as a joke," Simpson revealed after his latest win. "I thought in my head I'll never use this thing. I took it out on the putting green and I made everything, and I went out on the course with my dad and putted really well. You know, the only hesitation was I knew when I got back to campus my teammates would probably make fun of me.

"But I went back, and they saw me putting with it, and I actually got Kyle Reifers, who's two years older, he was kind of making fun of me, but he saw me putt with it and then he switched and then he won his first college tournament a couple weeks later.

"So that was kind of how it started."

And perhaps that's the point - a belly putter can't turn a decent professional into a world-class one overnight (Simpson achieved that on the practice range, with his coach or through some other means), but it can turn a good player like Scott into one verging on greatness.

Does such an effect warrant banning? Consider every player - from amateur to tour pro - is searching for such effects in everything they buy for the course, the answer would appear to be no.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.