When sportscaster Kay Adams asked Jordan Spieth to address a certain hot topic on her “Up & Adams” podcast. at the Players Championship on Wednesday, he looked and sounded a bit like a witness being questioned on the stand.
“Can you tell me what I need to know about this anchor thing?” Kay asked Spieth, who was sitting at a table across from her. “Akshay wins API. Is this okay? Isn’t that okay? Should the posts be shorter? Shouldn’t long shots be a thing?”
Kay was referring to Akshay Bhatia, who won the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week by one 50 inch broom and an oh-so-close-to-anchor technique in which he hovers his shooter’s butt within a chest whisper; pressing the club IN his chest was to be anchored, which was outlawed by governing bodies in 2016, but Bhatia is not anchoring. The problem is that the space between the bottom of his shot and his sternum is so narrow that the gap is difficult to detect with the naked eye, which has led fans on social media to not only question Bhatia’s method, but also accuse him of cheating.
When the peanut gallery made those allegations during the Pebble Beach event Earlier this year, Bhatia wrote on Instagram, “Not the anchor. Literally 2 inches off my chest haha.” On Monday, in the wake of a new wave of anchor skepticism directed at Bhatia, PGA Tour winner Michael Kim came to Bhatia’s defense. writing in X“It’s funny to me that Akshay’s anchoring is a thing. Personally, it’s not that close. That’s not a concern among players.”
Not many pros have been asked on the record about Bhatia’s approach, though, so when Kay put the question to Spieth, who sits on the Tour’s Players Advisory Council, you could tell he was choosing his words as carefully as a club selection on the 12th tee. Augusta Nationalthough without the advice of caddy Michael Greller.
“Um…” Spieth began as he and Kay watched footage of Bhatia’s putt. “That’s, uh…”
But before long, Spieth was on his way.
“There’s a skill to it,” Spieth said. “If it was that easy to do and made everyone so much better, everyone would be doing it. … He’s been doing it for a long time. Most people who have done it (have been).”
Bhatia, who is 24 years old, hasn’t actually used a broom in that long. After struggling with the greens early in his professional career, he consulted with several long-time football converts, including Lucas Glover. In the fall of 2023, Bhatia made the leap. “We took a chance to switch to the broomstick and I talked to a few players about it and they gave me some good advice, just what to work on,” Bhatia said at Masters 2024. “I made a promise to myself that I’m going to take at least six months to try this equipment, no matter how it goes, and so far my stats have skyrocketed.”
In the 2022–23 season, Bhatia finished 183rd in SG: Putting. In 2024 and 2025, he finished among the top 40 in the category. This season, he is currently ranked 12th, helped in part by his sensational week on the fresh surfaces at Bay Hill. Bhatia’s combined 16.3 strokes gained on and around the green was the best performance by a tournament winner in the ShotLink era, which dates back to 1983.
Bhatia, of course, is not the first professional to come under scrutiny for using a broom. Top winners Adam Scott and Bernhard Langer they have also heard it from the critics. But Bhatia IS one of the youngest pros to adopt a long shot. Combine that fact with his much-improved form and now his third Tour win and he becomes an easy mark for skeptics and traditionalists.
So where does Spieth stand on sweepers overall?
Pushed by Kay for his opinion on Wednesday, he said: “I would like the putter to be the shortest club in your bag because it’s the shortest club in my bag and I believe it forces more skill. It uses your hands more, which makes you more, kind of athletic, and deal with things that come out a little bit more.”
Tiger Woods said much the same thing in 2012, four years before anchoring was outlawed. “I believe it’s the art of controlling the body and the club and swinging the swing,” Woods said of his distaste for what were then called “belly putters.” “I believe that’s the way it should be played. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to that.”
However you feel about broomsticks, reasonable minds can probably agree that at least the optics of Bhatia’s method are problematic. But that’s not up to Bhatia to sort out – that’s up to lawmakers, whose job it is to remove gray areas from the rulebook, especially if those gray areas are causing fans to unfairly question the players’ integrity.
