The Belly Putter
The Belly Putter
The belly putter is golf’s latest and greatest idea – a compromise between the advantage of the long putter and the practicality of the traditional putter. The belly putter is longer than the traditional putter and shorter than the long putter.
You grip the belly putter just as you may imagine by the image that the name conjures up, by anchoring the top, butt end of the club, literally, into your belly. By anchoring the putter in your belly, the motion of the stroke becomes simpler and more reliable, just like a pendulum effect, just as with the long putter.
Vijay Singh, the professional golfer who unseated Tiger Woods as the world’s top-ranked player in 2004, popularized the belly putter more than any other player. Ironically, when Singh took the top ranking from Tiger Woods, he’d recently switched back from a long spell with the belly putter to a traditional putter.