With that, let’s look at the most remarkable statistical feats of the 2019-’20 season, from the impressive to the heartbreaking to the weird.

1. Jon Rahm wins the strokes-gained crown in a down year

Jon Rahm’s average strokes gained against the field, in 57 measured rounds, was a very solid 1.823, nosing ahead of Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Webb Simpson and Bryson DeChambeau. But what’s interesting about Rahm’s total is that it’s the lowest winning number since Steve Stricker was No. 1 in 2010 with 1.818. Only twice in the last 10 years has the strokes gained/total leader won with a number lower than 2 (the average for the last 10 winners, including Rahm, is 2.22). It’s hard to know exactly why this happened; perhaps the tournaments that were cancelled due to COVID-19 trended a bit easier. In any case, it’s Rahm’s first overall SG crown, and it adds a subtle reason his fellow tour pros might consider him for PGA Tour Player of the Year.

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2. Bud Cauley makes the “2/3” sand-save club

It’s one of the oddities about sports that for certain feats, there are seemingly arbitrary numbers that turn out to be useful cutoffs for separating the good and the great—like, for instance, a .300 batting average. For sand saves, it turns out that anyone who averages better than 66.67 percent, i.e. someone who makes better than two out of every three sand saves, has attained an elusive level of excellence. That’s what Bud Cauley accomplished in 2020, going 69/103 from the sand for a 66.99-percent rate. Before him, the list of those who had beaten the “2/3” mark this millennium is short: Rickie Fowler (2017), K.J. Choi (2013), Tim Clark (2007), Franklin Langham (2001) and Fred Couples (2000).

Matt Sullivan

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3. Martin Trainer and the year of the hellish approach

Since the PGA Tour started keeping SG/approach stats in 2004, no player has ever averaged more than two strokes lost (as in -2) per round for a whole season. Until 2020, that is. Martin Trainer, who was dead last on the 2019 list, too, lost 82.502 strokes to the field in 39 measured rounds, for an abysmal -2.115 average. It’s a big reason why he missed the cut in 19 of 21 starts, and it makes his 2019 win at the Puerto Rico Open look even more anomalous. This is a year he’ll be eager to forget, but as Brendon Todd has shown us, twice, you’re never truly dead in the game of golf.

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4. Bryson DeChambeau hits the sixth-longest putt since 2003

DeChambeau made a ton of news this year, but not much of it for his putting. Still, on the 18th hole Saturday in the PGA Championship, he did this:

Bryson DeChambeau…FROM 95 FEET?!?! pic.twitter.com/MQB1DgneMp

— Golf on CBS (@GolfonCBS) August 8, 2020

The PGA Tour has longest-putt stats going back to 2003, and only five people have made a longer putt than DeChambeau’s 95 feet, five inches. The longest was Craig Barlow at the Buick Open in 2008, and it remains tragic to me that no footage of this exists. For what it’s worth, Bryson missed the top five by two inches—Nick Watney made a 95 foot, seven incher in 2017.

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5. Jason Kokrak is the four-foot prince of the millennium

Every year, there are a group of players who make every single putt from three feet—this year, there were 20, including Phil Mickelson, who went 419-for-419—but once you move back to four feet, perfection is a tantalizing impossibility. Every year since 2003, when Shotlink distances were first measured, no player has made every four-foot putt in a season. The top guys always come close, missing just one or two, but nobody runs the table. This season, Jason Kokrak led all comers, hitting 101 of 102 four-footers, for a 99.02 percentage. As it turns out, that’s the second-best number ever, trailing only Jim Furyk’s 99.12 (113-for-114) from 2011. This is one spot where the COVID stoppage may have kept him from all-time glory—a few more putts, and he would have nudged ahead of Furyk.

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Michael Reaves

6. Beau Hossler is the three-putt avoidance prince of the millennium

This season, Hossler three-putted just 16 times over 1,206 total holes, for a 1.33 percent three-putt rate. Like Kokrak and his four-footers, that was nearly enough to secure the best rate of the 2000s. And like Kokrak, he only fell short of a 2011 performance, in this case Luke Donald and his 15 three-putts in the exact same number of holes. Just one fewer three-putt, and Hossler would have shared the crown.

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7. Jim Furyk tops the GIR list at age 50

Time has clearly not taken hampered Furyk’s maddening consistency, as he proved this season with his tour-leading 74.22 percent greens-in-regulation rate. To find a better percentage, you have to go back to 2001, when Tom Lehman averaged 74.53 percent. Now, going back to sample size, we have to note that Furyk only had 39 rounds, which is about half as many attempts as the typically leader in this category would post. Then again, when you’re twice the age of some of your competitors, maybe you should be allowed to make your point in half the time.

Tom Pennington

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8. Bryson DeChambeau joins an elite driving group

The big man again! Since 2004, when the PGA Tour first began keeping strokes-gained stats, there have been only four men who have averaged more than one stroke gained against the field off the tee for a full season. Three of them are obvious: Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson. The fourth is Sergio Garcia, who squeaked in with a 1.003 SG/off-the-tee number in 2005. This year, Bryson DeChambeau became the fifth in the +1 Drivers Club, with 64.417 strokes gained over 62 measured rounds, for an average of 1.039 per round. Clearly, at least off the tee, his bulking routine paid dividends. Interestingly, Cam Champ came up just shy, with an average of .999.

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9. Webb Simpson wins the scoring average title

In beating Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas for the best scoring average for the season, Webb Simpson did so by dipping (albeit just barely) into 68 territory with a 68.978 average through 52 rounds. That puts him in pretty exclusive company. In the last decade, only Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Sergio Garcia, and Jordan Spieth have maintained a sub-69 average in a single season. McIlroy had the lowest average in 2014, and if you’re wondering if anyone has ever beaten 68, the answer is yes—it’s Tiger, of course, in 2000 (67.749) and 2007 (67.794).

Christian Petersen

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10. Denny McCarthy repeats as SG/putting champ, puts up second-best mark ever

As with the other strokes-gained stats we’ve looked at so far, the PGA Tour’s SG/putting rankings only go back to 2004. In that time, only one man has averaged better than one stroke gained against the field for a full season, and that was Jason Day in 2016. This year, Denny McCarthy got awfully close, averaging .988 per round in another brilliant season, second all-time. He also became just the third repeat winner since the stat was kept, joining Luke Donald (2009-2011) and Ben Crane (2005-2006). Interestingly, those gaudy numbers from McCarthy were only good for four top-10 finishes this season, highlighting his struggles elsewhere. For two years, McCarthy has been the tour’s equivalent of a one-trick pony, but he’s very good at that one trick.

The post 10 remarkable season-ending stats from a strange year on the PGA Tour appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
It was Monday afternoon and Martin Trainer wanted to go play nine holes at TPC Twin Cities in preparation for this week’s 3M Open. The only problem: He hadn’t heard from his caddie, Aaron Crawford.

“I was expecting him to text around 2 p.m.,” Trainer said.

More time passed. Nothing.

About an hour later, the phone rang. It was Crawford, and he told his boss he’d have to find someone else to carry his bag this week.

Trainer was bummed but also elated. Crawford had just shot 63 at nearby Victory Links to Monday qualify for the 3M. Trainer, a 29-year-old, one-time PGA Tour winner, would have to find a replacement looper for the bag.

“When I didn’t get a response at first I thought I better see what’s going on, so I went online thinking the round had taken a while, and when I checked scoring I saw that he was eight under,” Trainer said. “I thought uh oh I might need a new caddie. I texted him and told him great round.”

Indeed. At one point, Crawford ripped off six birdies in a seven-hole stretch in the middle of his round.

It was a big one, too.

Though it isn’t the first time a caddie will play in the same tournament as his boss—it happened at the 2009 Valero Texas Open with Lance Ten Broeck and Jesper Parnevik—this week’s 3M will be the 25-year-old Canadian’s first start on the PGA Tour after turning pro out of high school in 2012 and toiling the last handful of years on mini tours and the PGA Tour’s north-of-the-border circuit, the Mackenzie Tour.

Only recently had Crawford started caddying, working a couple of tournaments last year and a handful more this year for Trainer, with whom he struck up a friendship during Korn Ferry Tour qualifying school in Palm Springs.

“It’s a process,” Crawford said of the ups and downs of the pursuit of reaching the PGA Tour. “At heart, though, I’m a player.”

Trainer thinks so, too.

Though he lost his caddie for the week—he’ll have Sean Zak of Golf.com on the bag instead—Trainer was more than happy for Crawford’s breakthrough, not just because of their friendship but because he knows better than most how fine the line is between success and the abyss. In his 35 starts since his lone victory in Puerto Rico last year, Trainer has missed the cut an astounding 29 times.

Still, he feels good about the direction his game is headed, in part because of the work he’s done with his coach Terry Rowles and the second set of eyes that Crawford has provided. He likes what he sees out of Crawford, too.

“I think he has a great chance of playing well,” Trainer said. “He’s clearly playing well right now and he’s one of best putters I’ve seen. He has game to compete on tour.”

Though Crawford won’t be on the bag he and Trainer also won’t be far from each other this week. The two are sharing a hotel room and will be pulling for one another.

And what if Trainer loses his caddie for good?

“He’s clearly overqualified,” Trainer said. “I would be happier for him to go on and have a great career than I would be to have him on my bag.”

The post Caddie’s scorching qualifier takes him from looping to playing in 3M Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
Martin Trainer has a 9:29 a.m. PST tee time in the third round of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club on Saturday. If that doesn’t seem like that big a deal, well you might not be familiar with the recent record of Martin Trainer.

Last February, the 28-year-old won the Puerto Rico Open in just his ninth start on the PGA Tour. It was a celebrated victory for a tour rookie still trying to find his way in pro golf. And yet Trainer has struggled to follow up that momentous moment.

Having made the cut in three of his next five starts after the win (best showing a T-41 at the Players Championship), Trainer proceeded to either miss the cut or withdraw from 21 of his next 22 starts. And the one tournament in that stretch in which he played all four rounds was the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January, which technically had no cut and which he finished 34th … out of 34 players.

Returning to a familiar place in Los Angeles and Riviera—Trainer played college golf at USC, graduating in 2013, and the Trojans regularly had practice rounds at the George Thomas gem—appeared to have a calming effect. Trainer, ranked 391st in the Official World Golf Ranking, shot rounds of 72-71 to make the cut on the number at one-over 143.

That said, Friday was not without an anxious finish. Playing his final hole of the second round, the famed par-4 18th, and needing only bogey to get to the weekend after making birdie on the 17th, Trainer drove his ball way right into the trees. He managed to punch his second shot short and left of the green, a little more than 30 yards from the pin, but when he chipped his third shot, it speedily ran past the hole on to the fringe on the other side of the green.

Facing a slick, downhill 18-footer for par, Trainer proceeded to hit his ball five feet past the hole. If things had gone the way they had the previous 22 starts, Trainer would have missed the bogey putt. Mercifully for him, he holed it, making a cut in an event that has a cut for the first time in 45 weeks.

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