Putting adjustments include ‘saddling’ from the side

“(What he does is) called ‘side saddling.’ That’s pretty much the guy,” Sigg said of Dechambeau and his putting style. “He completely does it different. I don’t really know why. I’ve never asked him why he does it.”

Sigg, who will compete in the Dogwood Invitational at Druid Hills on Wednesday, was first exposed to the bizarre putting style at the Puerto Rico Classic in February.

Side saddling, which is when a golfer uses a putter with a fat, square head, aligns the club alongside his body and hits the ball head-on, is one of several methods used to optimize ball control and steadiness of stroke during a putt.

Although side saddling is a relatively less common approach, it and other methods like it are gaining traction within the amateur and professional golf communities to combat the impending banishment of one controversial method: anchoring.

Effective Jan. 1, 2016, anchoring a long putter or belly putter against one’s sternum or stomach will no longer be allowed in golf after a decision by the United States Golf Association and the R&A — the governing bodies of golf and its rules. Long putters will still be allowed in competition; it is the hinged positioning of the putter against one’s body that will get the axe.

The rule change will affect everyone from Keegan Bradley, who won the 2011 PGA Championship with a belly putter, to the amateurs competing in the Dogwood Invitational. But tournament chairman Edward Toledano said he already sees the effects of the looming ban.

“I think (belly putting is) probably going away, from the amateur’s perspective of, ‘Since it’s not going to be there anymore, why do we play with it?’” Toledano said. “From a tournament chairman’s perspective, I don’t care what they put with. … I don’t see it as any kind of cheating thing. I just see it as a refinement of the rule.”

But one Dogwood competitor shook his belly-putting habit simply because he felt as if he had an unfair advantage.

“I used (a belly putter) for a little while and I felt like I was cheating so I switched back to the normal putter,” said Zac Stolz, a Dogwood participant from New South Wales. Now, Stolz prefers that his competitors shy away from belly putting as well.

“I don’t really like it when I see them with it because I did use mine and I do feel like it’s definitely an advantage,” Stolz said. “But I didn’t want to get used to it because they are banning them, so I just use standard putter, very standard grip.”

Other amateurs at the Dogwood have given the long putter a shot before, too — such as Cole Ackerman, who said the method helped eliminate risk movement of the putter.

“I used to belly, and then in 2012 when they were talking about banning it, I talked to my instructor,” said Cole Ackerman, a sophomore at Berry who failed to qualify for the Dogwood at Monday’s open qualifier.

Forced to ditch the advantages in short-distance putting and stability that anchoring can provide, amateurs such as Ackerman and Lee McCoy, a teammate of Sigg’s at Georgia, have opted for the arm-lock method made popular by Matt Kuchar, a graduate of Georgia Tech and the No. 4 golfer on the PGA Tour.

“For me I know it helped me a lot in situations where I had a big putt,” McCoy said. “It just makes it harder to hit a really bad putt.”

Although pressing the grip of the putter shaft against his forearm helped McCoy in those clutch putting moments, he chose to resort back to the traditional style preferred by his coach and fellow teammates.

“The pros to putting with the putter grip up against my forearm would be on shorter putts,” McCoy said. “The putter plate can’t really move a lot just because my hands are completely out of the stroke. But if my hands are completely out of the stroke on some of the longer putts, 15-, 20-footers, it’s tougher to have really good speed because you can’t really feel a whole lot.”

Sigg acknowledges the success McCoy had with a Kuchar-style putter, but his fondness for traditionalism reflects in his support of his teammate’s switch back to a “normal” putter.

And for Sigg, no putter or method can supplement assurance in one’s swing. If a golfer has a steady tremor when he hits the putting green, there’s only so much a pricey stick of steel can do. A club may make a bad putter a good putter, but it will not turn a good putter into a great one.

“Putting has a lot to do with how you feel — your confidence level,” Sigg said.

Those in the business of making putts likely will take the next full season to adjust and prepare, should their method of choice be affected by the impending ban. In a game in which accuracy is crucial, perfecting the putt is a science of the unattainable.

Georgia men’s golf coach Chris Haack reinforced the notion that such experimentation will never cease in the sport.

“Any time the pros are doing something, amateurs and college players and juniors are going to emulate that, and they’re going to try it,” Haack said. “Any time you see a player do something that’s not very conventional, somebody’s going to try it out and see what it’s all about and see if it works.”

“But they’ll try anything. Guys will try anything to make themselves shoot lower rounds.”

Anything — such as hitting a golf ball head-on, side-saddle style as one would in a high-stakes game of croquet. But don’t expect to see that extreme at this week’s Dogwood Invitational. Jarrod Freeman, another competitor who hails from New South Wales, said he’s never seen such a thing in his life.

“Must be just a weird bloke.”