It's no belly laugh as golfers prepare to fight for the jolly green giant Anchoring a club, by rooting it to the grass with downward pressure from the stomach or ribcage, is not allowed, apparently, since it diminishes the impact of nerve-induced trembling in the hands. Whether Adam Scott, who lost the Open to Els by dropping four shots over the final four holes, concurs that the belly putter is the choker's best mate is debatable. It is 11 years since the US Supreme Court last entertained a golf hearing, and, if anything was designed to ridicule the notion that golf's rule makers tend toward the pedantic and authoritarian, it was the 2001 case of PGA Tour, Inc v Martin. There, the court agreed with a disabled golfer, Casey Martin, who for no more compelling reason than being unable to walk, claimed the right to use a golf buggy between shots. Once again with the forthcoming US PGA v Els, Bradley, Et Alia, the judgment of Solomon will be needed. So I submit to the Justices that they summon, as an expert witness, the wisest golfing sage who ever wittered "Oooh, ooooh, thar she blows, "nana sandwich, "nana sandwich, oy vey, and now let's go to Sam Torrance who's with Bubba Watson on the 12th tee." I refer, of course, to that Socrates of the snug bar, that Nietxche of the 19th, Peter Alliss. Anything Peter has to impart on any golfing issue may be taken as the law, and on this he could have made himself no plainer. My old friend declared in May, on his induction into a golfing Hall of Fame, that the belly putter's inventor should be hanged...a marked hardening of his earlier position that said inventor "should be flogged and then sent to prison." With Mr Alliss invoking corporal and capital punishment, it is impossible to overstate the significance of this fight. Even at this stage, one prays that a pre-trial compromise will be found, and it is encouraging to read that the US PGA has been talking to leading American professionals, including defeated Ryder Cup captain Davis Love. But you can't hurry Love, as the Supremes should now better than anyone. You just have to wait... and so we shall, on tenterhooks, until the wheels of justice grind to a resolution of what may prove the single most important civil rights battle the free world has known since Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus.