For the last five years, Grantham golfer Alexandra Schmidt has used a long putter, and she's been pleased with the results.

“It's made the biggest difference on putts less than 10 feet,” said the 22-year-old Eastman Golf Links player, who's a fifth-year senior on the Eastern Kentucky University women's golf team. “I think it helps me drop at least five strokes a round.”

A 3-handicapper, Schmidt anchors the broomstick wand against her upper chest with her left hand while guiding it back and through with her right hand, which is positioned several inches below the left. With the confidence her long putter gives her, Schmidt has no plans to abandon it. But when she went back to school recently, she made sure to pack a conventional-length putter as a backup, she said.

The reason? Long putters might soon go the way of the stymie and square-grooved irons.

A familiar foil against the dreaded “yips,” long putters have been part of golf for three decades. But as more touring pros have achieved success with the clubs in recent months, the game's governing bodies have been examining their use, in particular the practice of anchoring putters against the body. It has been widely speculated that the U.S. Golf Association and Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews will announce a ban on anchoring as soon as this fall, a decision that would relegate most long putters to the scrap heap.

First popularized by the Champions Tour's 50-and-older set, long putters have trickled down into younger hands in recent years along with belly putters, their slightly shorter cousins that players typically anchor into their abdomens. Three of the last five PGA Tour players to win major championships — Keegan Bradley (2011 PGA Championship), Webb Simpson (2012 U.S. Open) and Ernie Els (2012 British Open) — used belly putters en route to victory, while Adam Scott has posted two runner-up finishes in recent majors using a broomstick.

Should the USGA and R&A outlaw anchoring, it's likely there would be separate grace periods for both amateur players and elite competitors before a ban would go into effect — meaning Schmidt probably won't need to dump her broomstick in the immediate wake of any ruling. Still, she believes anchoring receives a bad rap.

“I think it's ridiculous in the sense that people think it's the same as cheating,” she said. “I feel that if people think that, why don't more individuals use (long putters).”

Indeed, neither scientific nor statistical evidence has proven that anchoring is a biomechanically superior putting method, golf writer Jaime Diaz observes in a column appearing in the Sept. 10 issue of Golf World magazine. “The very best putters continue almost exclusively to putt conventionally,” he writes.

So why are golf's governing bodies so concerned? Whereas for much of their existence long putters were a last resort for players with chronic putting woes, such as reformed yipper Bernhard Langer, they have become more mainstream. With more players choosing broomstick or belly putters, there's a threat that in 50 years everyone will be using them, according to Diaz. And that eventuality doesn't sit well with the game's rulesmakers.

“Very simply, widespread use of long putters is not the way the USGA and R&A want the game to look,” Diaz writes.

Like Schmidt, Dan Wilkins has used a broomstick for the better part of five years. Although the 52-year-old Laconia pro recently won the New England PGA Senior Championship wielding his 48-inch weapon, he considers himself an average putter.

“I don't feel like I have an advantage,” he said.

Wilkins has more confidence with a long putter than with a standard one, and he can putt without anchoring the broomstick to his body, he said. And although the prospect of switching back to a conventional-length putter doesn't faze him, he is concerned that a ban on anchoring could negatively affect golf participation.

“There are a lot of people I know who would quit the game if they couldn't use a long putter,” he said. “The game's already in decline. The last thing you want to do is start discouraging people from playing golf.”

On the anchoring issue, it seems the USGA and R&A are more concerned about preserving tradition than protecting the game's integrity or fostering its growth. Without evidence that anchoring provides a clear competitive advantage, I say let the long putters stay.

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Through the green: Hampstead's Lauren Thibodeau won the girls' 12-year-old division at the U.S. Kids Golf Seaview Open in Galloway, N.J., last Sunday. The reigning New Hampshire Women's Golf Association junior champion, Thibodeau shot 74-77 and won by 12 strokes. ... Windham's Connor Greenleaf and Keene's Chelso Barrett competed last weekend in the John D. Mineck DBC Junior Cup, a team match-play event staged concurrently with the PGA Tour's Deutsche Bank Championship. Greenleaf was part of a duo that earned five of a possible six points to lead Team New England to a four-point victory over Team USA in Hingham, Mass. ... The three division winners of the 2012 Red Ryan CYO Golf Tournament — Phillip Schmitz, Joshua Lacasse and C.J. Konkowski — met PGA Tour player and former Red Ryan champion Scott Stallings during the Deutsche Bank Championship. Meanwhile Scott Underhill, the 21-year-old Bedford golfer who underwent brain surgery last December to address a structural malformation, met Tour player J.B. Holmes, who had similar surgery a few months earlier.

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Mike Cullity may be reached at mcullity@unionleader.com.