The Long and the Short of It

Els did not want to align himself with Bradley and such other angry souls as Adam Scott and Carl Pettersson. In sticking his heels in, he would only have made it tougher for himself to re-establish a relationship with his old short putter.

Also, he could not complain that he had not had any kind of an input to the debate. He had been asked for his opinion early on, only no one had come back to him after he claimed his fourth Major title at Lytham. That was when he would like to have explained that his long putter had far less to do with his success than officialdom seemed to think.

At Mission Hills, he took time to talk through his putting experiences over the years, whilst simultaneously coming up with a full explanation as to why he had putted as well as he did at The Open.

The first thing he wanted to get across was that while his belly-putter had had a hand in his golfing revival, it had never served as the magic wand which the media had made it out to be: "People have been led to believe that if you pick up a longer putter and anchor it to your chin, chest, belly or wherever, all your troubles are over. That, though, is so much nonsense."

He cheerfully admitted that he had once been guilty of seeing the long-putter as pretty fool-proof himself. Back in 2004, when Vijay Singh switched to a long putter and soared from outside the top 100 on the putting statistics to inside the top 10, he led the way in calling for a ban on the implement. "I believe nerves and the skill of putting are all part of the game,” were the words he used at the time.