The saying "horses for courses" applies as much to golfers as it does to the odds at the racetrack, and it was the key to Collin Morikawa’s win this month at the PGA Championship at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park.
In effect, even before the first ball was hit, the odds were in the 23-year-old American’s favour, despite his having been on the PGA Tour for only a little over a year.
Those odds are defined by the strengths and weaknesses of golfers, particularly when they play the harder, longer courses set up for the game’s blue-ribbon events. And the yardstick is against PGA statistics called “strokes gained”.
This concept, the brainchild of Columbia University business professor Mark Broadie, is considered an important measure for assessing player performance because it compares each aspect of a golfer’s game with that of the other competitors.
Take, for example, approach shots. If the PGA has calculated from historical records that it takes tournament golfers an average of 2.825 shots to finish a hole from 115 yards out, and a player in fact finishes 10 feet away from the pin with his approach shot – a position from which it takes 1.61 putts on average to finish out – then the golfer has beaten the average on "strokes gained: approach" shots.
Looking at the major winners over the past decade, and the strokes-gained statistics, a very clear trend emerges. According to PGA statistics, 65 percent of major winners were in the top 30 in strokes gained off the tee relative to the rest of the field across the year they won; 58 percent were in the top 30 for strokes gained on approach; and 88 percent were in the top 30 for shots gained from tee to green.
By comparison, chipping and putting expertise is far less represented in major victories, with only a third of winners in the top 30 for strokes gained around the green during the year they won and just 15 percent in the top 30 for strokes gained putting.
Does Morikawa fit this profile?
Across the rounds he played on the PGA Tour last year, he was 99th in strokes gained putting and 115th in strokes gained around the green. This year, before the PGA Championship, he was 164th in strokes gained putting and 119th in strokes gained around the green.
However, Morikawa is in the elite bracket in most other PGA statistics. Last year, he was 29th in strokes gained off the tee, 4th in strokes gained on approach and 8th in strokes gained tee to green. This year, before the PGA Championship, he was 17th in strokes gained off the tee, 2nd in strokes gained on approach and 4th in strokes gained tee to green. It is in the latter bracket that the key ingredients for major success come into relief.
But surely putting isn’t completely irrelevant? How many times have golfers dropped the old cliché, “I played all right, but I just couldn’t make a putt”, or words to that effect? I have personally sabotaged many rounds with a raft of three putts in combination with a series of what I will refer to as “mechanical errors” while chipping.
The reality is that putting is inherently high variance, which becomes more pronounced at the professional level. If a golfer sinks a 40-foot putt (about 12 metres) statistically they are gaining a significant amount of ground relative to the field. If that same putt is a centimetre to the left or lips out and is tapped in for two putts, statistically they are gaining almost nothing.
As a result, the best putters in golf are regularly beaten by the superior ball strikers and fairway players because the top 30 tee-to-green players will be closer to the hole with their approach shots and will be in a better position to translate their putts into low scores.
Take Morikawa at the PGA Championship, for example. His putting has looked substandard at best over 2019 and 2020, but he finished first in strokes gained putting over the course of the four rounds of the PGA Championship and won his first major.
In fact, all of the major winners over the past decade have finished inside the top 40 in strokes gained putting over the course of their four rounds, leaving us with a straightforward conclusion. Do you have to be among the world’s best putters during the season to win a major tournament? No. Does your putter need to run hot in the short term to win a major? Yes.
For all of the hype among pundits and fans about the strength of fields in modern major golf, history has shown time and again that on the most elongated and difficult courses, it is the tee-to-green players who are the most likely to put themselves in a position to take home the sport’s most coveted silverware, not those most deft around the green.
