Almost since the day he first picked up a golf club 12 years ago, Fred Johnson has anchored a long putter into his chest.

A long putter helps compensate for back pain, says Johnson. And anchoring that putter helps the 70-year-old Crooked River Ranch resident helps to negate that back pain and putt with more consistency, he says.

“I started fooling around with (a long putter) and just switched it over,” says Johnson, an 8 handicap who also putts with an unorthodox sidesaddle stance. “I just got to where I liked it.”

By Jan. 1, 2016, Johnson will no longer be able to anchor that putter into his body — not by the official rules of golf, anyway.

The United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient — golf’s two main governing bodies — announced last week that they would be amending the 2016 Rules of Golf to ban golfers from any kind from anchoring.

No longer will a golfer be able to hold a club “in contact with any part of his body, except that the player may hold the club or gripping hand against a hand or forearm,” the USGA ruled.

In other words, golfers such as Johnson will have to come up with a different putting stroke in which both ends of a putter will be free.

“It’ll just be a new experience,” Johnson says.

The ban comes after a growth in popularity in recent years of anchored long putters, most commonly with belly putters or putters anchored into a golfer’s chest.

And three of the past five major championships on the PGA Tour have been won by golfers using the technique.

The debate over the practice reached a fever pitch in recent months with opponents such as Tiger Woods arguing that anchoring provides a competitive advantage.

Regardless of where the debate began, the ban means amateurs of every skill level will no longer be allowed to use the anchored putting stroke during formal competition or during rounds to be posted to an official USGA handicap index.

Craig Winter, the head of rules education for the Oregon Golf Association, says it is important to note that the ban will have no bearing on what type of putter a golfer uses. Indeed, the USGA has gone to great lengths to communicate that the ban covers only the anchored stroke and not the long putters that help make the stroke possible.

“As they said, it’s defining the stroke,” says Winter, who is largely in support of the rule change. “It’s the way this game has been played for 600 years and all of a sudden there is this hybrid-type stroke that is not free swinging. And that is what this rule is addressing.”

Banning the putting stroke and not the equipment is a key difference. (PGA Tour pro Matt Kuchar’s grip in which he braces the end of the putter against his forearm will remain legal.)

Still, amateurs who anchor and have no plans to change — and generally, enforcement of rules is limited to competitions — might find the equipment more difficult to find.

Manufacturers such as TaylorMade and Callaway have announced that they will continue to make long putters in the near term.

But will there still be a market for them?

“I really don’t know if we are going to carry less of them or more of them,” says Todd Kruse, a PGA professional at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Bend.

The incentive for retailers to keep the putters in stock might not be great. Kruse estimates that less than 5 percent of putter sales at Dick’s are long putters.

“Saleswise, it such a small percentage,” Kruse, says.

Pat Huffer, head pro at Crooked River Ranch, agrees that long putters appeal to a relatively small market. And he is already planning to reduce his pro shop’s inventory of long putters in the near future.

“We probably won’t order any for the spring,” says Huffer. “The market is not going to wait until 2016, I don’t think. … I think golfers will find just another way to putt right now (rather than buy a long putter).”

Either way, by banning the stroke and not the putter, Winter says that the rule change addresses the main concern of opponents of a ban: That it could turn off some golfers at a time when the industry is desperately trying to find ways to grow the game.

“I think the only group of people who really do end up having a change because of (the ban) are golfers who found anchoring to be a cure for something, and that allows them to compete,” Winter says. “I don’t think that people are going to stop playing the game.”

Johnson, the Crooked River Ranch golfer, certainly won’t be giving up golf.

He was actually relieved when the USGA announced that he could still use his long putter rather than having it taken away a ban.

“That would have made me mad,” Johnson says, adding that if it were to ban the long putter the USGA also should ban “graphite shafts and titanium drivers” and other technological advances that have made conventional equipment obsolete.

With the USGA’s ruling, Johnson can still use the equipment that helps him compensate for a bad back while maintaining what he calls the “purity” of the game.

“I thought it was a good solution,” Johnson says.

He will have to come up with a new putting stroke, something Johnson says he will begin tinkering with immediately.

But at his age, he is not going to worry too much about rules that come into effect in 2016.

“It isn’t anything that is going to bother me,” Johnson says. “But I’ll make the change just to make everybody happy.”

Rule 14-1B

For a detailed look at what grips will be legal and illegal: www.usga.org/rules/Proposed-Changes-to-Rule-14-1