Golf: In professional golf, as it is for the ordinary club player, getting the ball into the hole is the bottom line. Ernie Els, though, wonders if some players are using an unfair method - albeit one that's entirely legal in the eyes of golf's governing bodies - to achieve that aim. Philip Reid, in Heidelberg, reports

Yesterday, after the first round of the Deutsche Bank SAP Open TPC of Europe at St Leon-Rot Golf Club, he questioned aloud if the time hadn't come to ban the belly putter, a device that has won over an increasing number of admirers in recent years.

Ironically enough, the player who took the fewest number of putts here yesterday was Englishman David Howell, who used the traditional sized putter just 25 times in a round of 65, which left him in a three-way tie for the lead alongside Trevor Immelman and Gregory Havret.

He has not been converted to the long putter and doesn't see the day when he will ever be tempted; indeed, like Els, Howell is also of the belief that the belly putter should be outlawed.

"Ban it," said Howell, when asked his opinion on the matter. "I don't think you should be able to place the club against your chest or your belly . . . it just doesn't seem fair to me that you should be raising the club against your body and using it as a point of anchor.

"Part of the art of the game is being able to hold your nerve over short putts, and I just think that sometimes takes away that slight edge."

Els' insistence that the belly putter, currently being reviewed by the R & A and the USGA, should be taken out of the golfer's bag came out of the blue. "I think nerves and the skill of putting is part of the game . . . you know, they should take a tablet if they can't handle it," said Els.

"The belly putter has become such an easy, easier way to putt. You actually push it into your body and then you can make a perfect stroke . . . if you put a pencil at the end of the putter, you're going to almost come back on the same angle every time. That's why I think they should ban it."

On a day when a number of the Irish contingent here suffered more trauma than most on the greens, which became crustier with each passing hour, you'd have felt the temptation would have been for them to rush off to borrow one of those belly putters to cure their putting demons.

Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke each shot rounds of 70, with the Dubliner officially taking 31 putts (although he used it a further four times from the fringes) and the Northerner taking 30 putts.

"Tee-to-green I hit the ball as well as I have for a long time," remarked Clarke," who immediately headed off to the putting green in an attempt to "find a putting stroke that's lurking there somewhere."

The player admitted he had "messed about" with the belly putter but didn't find it to his liking and wouldn't be using it any time soon.

As for Harrington, he puts his occasional woes on the greens down to being "just one of those things that come and go. I'm just not seeing the lines," he explained, "and there were times out there I had no idea where the ball was going to go.

"But you can't putt well every week of the year, you get periods of time when you go through things like this when you misread or mis-hit putts."

"It's a confidence thing," continued Harrington. "If you stay focused like I did on the last day of the Players' Championship at Sawgrass, you hole everything. Today I was fidgeting around.

"You just have to stay patient and ride it out. I've been long enough in this game to realise that putting comes and goes, but if you look at my statistics since I came out on tour I have led one or other of the putting stats virtually every year. My putting is not a problem."

As far as trying the belly putter, Harrington is not for changing. "I tried it, and it felt horrible," he said. "I can see the reasons for banning the belly putter, but I think the horse has bolted already.

"Well, maybe not bolted, because they did retrospectively ban the croquet style of putting and that precedent is there. So maybe the horse hasn't bolted . . . but he is running!"

To which Lee Westwood, one of those whose games has been rescued by switching to the belly putter, responded, "the horse hasn't just bolted, the race is finished".

Which one of the co-leaders will be glad to hear.

Trevor Immelman switched to the belly putter only at last week's British Masters. Yesterday, he covered the back nine - his front nine - in a mere 30 strokes without birdieing either of the two par fives.

Immelman was inspired to switch to the long putter after watching Vijay Singh win recently at New Orleans on the US Tour. "Watching him play, holing all those putts down the stretch, I thought I would give it a try and it felt great," remarked Immelman, whose performance prompted his fellow countryman Els to open a can of worms that may not be closed for quite some time.

The issue of belly putters was far from the minds of the other Irish players, with Graeme McDowell - who needs to stay in the top-three on the money list come Sunday night of those players not already exempt for the British Open to win a place in the field at Troon - opening with a 73, while Peter Lawrie and Gary Murphy had 71s and Damien McGrane a 75.