When sportscaster Kay Adams asked Jordan Spieth to talk about a hot topic on her podcast, “Up & Adams,” on Wednesday’s Players Championship, his expression and tone sounded like a witness being cross-examined on the stand.
“Can you tell me what I need to know about this anchoring?” Kaye asked Spieth, who was sitting at the desk across from him. “Akshay beats API. Is this good? Is it bad? Should I use a shorter putter? Should I use a longer putter?”
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Kay was referring to Akshay Bhatia, who won last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational with a 50-inch broom-like putter and an anchor-like technique in which he lifted the butt of the putter in front of his chest. push the club into the Bhatia does not have an anchor on his chest, which was banned by the governing body in 2016. The problem is that the space between the tip of his putter and his sternum is so narrow that it’s difficult to detect with the naked eye. As a result, fans on social media are not only questioning Bhatia’s methods but also squarely accusing him of cheating.
When Peanut Gallery made these claims during an event at Pebble Beach earlier this year, Bhatia wrote on Instagram, “I’m not anchoring. It literally doesn’t reach my chest 2 inches lol.” On Monday, following a new wave of anchoring skepticism against Bhatia, PGA Tour winner Michael Kim defended Bhatia, writing to X, “It’s funny to me that Akshay’s anchoring is an issue. Personally I’m not that close. This is not a concern among the players.”
Still, not many pros have been asked about Battier’s approach on the record, so when Kay asked Spieth, a member of the tour’s player advisory committee, it felt like he was choosing his words as carefully as he was choosing his club on the 12th tee at Augusta National, even without the input of caddy Michael Greller.
“Um…” Spieth began as he and Kaye reviewed footage of Battier’s putting stroke. “This is, umm…”
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But soon Spieth was on the move.
“There’s a skill to it,” Spieth said. “If it were that easy and everyone got better, everyone would do it. … He’s been doing it for a long time. Most of the people who do it do it.”
Bhatia, 24, actually hasn’t used a broom for that long. After struggling on the greens early in his professional career, he turned to several long putter converts, including Lucas Glover. In the fall of 2023, Bhatia made a breakthrough. “We took the chance to switch to brooms and talked about it with some players and they gave me good advice on what to work on,” Bhatia said at the 2024 Masters. “I promised myself that no matter what the results were, I would give myself at least six months to try this putter out. And so far, my stats have skyrocketed.”
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In the 2022-23 season, Bhatia finished 183rd in SG: Putt. In both 2024 and 2025, he finished in the top 40 in this category. He is currently ranked 12th this season, helped by a sensational week on the crisp surfaces of Bay Hill. Bhatia’s approximately 16.3 total strokes gained on and around the green was the best performance by a Tour winner in the Shotlink era dating back to 1983.
Of course, Bhatia is not the first professional to come under scrutiny for wielding a broomstick. Major winners Adam Scott and Bernhard Langer have also heard from critics. But Bhatia teeth One of the young professionals who adopted a long putter. That fact, combined with his much improved putting and his third win on tour, makes him an easy mark for skeptics and traditionalists alike.
So where does Spieth stand on sweepers in general?
Asked for his opinion by Kaye on Wednesday, he said, “I want the putter to be the shortest club in my bag, because it’s the shortest club in my bag. I believe the putter requires more skill. It uses your hands more, so you have to be more athletic and deal with the problems that come up a little more.”
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Tiger Woods said much the same thing in 2012, four years before anchoring was outlawed. “I think it’s the art of controlling your body and club and swinging a pendulum motion,” Woods said of his aversion to putters, then known as “belly” putters. “I believe that’s the way it should be. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to that.”
No matter what you think about broomsticks, any reasonable mind can probably agree that at least the optics of Bhatia’s method are flawed. But it’s not Bhatia’s responsibility to resolve it. It’s the rule makers’ job to remove gray areas from the rulebook, especially when those gray areas cause fans to unfairly question a player’s integrity.
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