strokes gained Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

The unexpected stat fuelling Justin Rose’s eye-catching good form

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 06:18:46 +0000

By Luke Kerr-Dineen
There are always a few players who, for one reason or another, never seem to fully get their due. Not that Justin Rose is some dark horse, of course. He’s not. But whether it’s against Phil Mickelson at the 2013 U.S. Open, Matt Kuchar at the Olympics, Sergio Garcia at the 2017 Masters or, more recently, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy at the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational, Rose always finds himself on the wrong end of some tough popularity content match-ups.

But while everybody’s spending Monday recounting Tiger’s brilliant play and Rory’s hot putting, we should also give some love to Rose, because he deserves it. He’s putting together an incredible start to his season, and dare I say it, he may be the real favourite heading into the Masters.

You’re probably aware of Justin Rose’s good recent finishes by now, because they’ve been hard to miss: He’s finished 1, T-5, T-8, T-37, T-5, 3 in his last six PGA Tour starts, with a T-10 on the European Tour sprinkled in between. It’s all amounted to Rose winning an astonishing 38 percent of his potential prize money this season, behind only Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas.

What’s most interesting about Justin Rose’s recent form, though, is what’s fuelling it.

Rose’s strength, at least up until now, has been from tee-to-green. Since 2011 he’s finished the season inside the top five of Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green four times, and has never finished worse that 15th. Writing for Golf World, statistician Dr. Lucius Riccio has routinely noted that he’s the best ball-striker on the PGA Tour.

Putting, by contrast, has been an issue. Over the same time period Rose has only finished inside the top 100 in Strokes Gained Putting once (97th, in 2011). But interestingly, it’s been fuelling his rise this season: Rose ranks fifth in Strokes Gained Putting, gaining an impressive 1.022 strokes on the putting surface.

Rose’s ball-striking hasn’t been as good in 2018 (he’s 34th in SG: Tee-to-Green so far), but I wouldn’t read too much into that. Rose’s past stats prove that he’s an elite ball-striker, and barring an injury or something else unfortunate, at 37, he’s not going to stop being one overnight. Indeed, he’s actually hitting the ball farther so far this season than last, so I’d expect this stat to regress to normal levels as the sample size gets bigger.

The same could probably be said of his putting, of course. He has never putted this well before so it’s unlikely that this is the new normal. But that doesn’t necessarily matter. Renowned statistician and Columbia professor Dr. Mark Broadie has written numberous times that wins on the PGA Tour come about, basically, when one part of a golfer game inflects suddenly and quickly up. Basically, when a good ball striker has good putting week, he wins, like Rory did at Bay Hill:

Best career putting tournament (where ShotLink data is collected) for @McIlroyRory at the #APInv pic.twitter.com/OWEwsUwzy8

— Mark Broadie (@MarkBroadie) March 19, 2018

Rose is doing exactly that. His putting stats have inflected up to levels we’ve never seen from him before. Sure, they’ll start coming down at some point, but they’ve shown no sign of that yet. Rose remains squarely in the middle of the best putting streak of his career, and with the Masters just 16 days away, it’s happening at the perfect time.

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Jordan Spieth struggles with putting again, misses the cut at the Valspar Championship

Golf Digest Middle East — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 05:43:55 +0000

Jordan Spieth reacts to missing a putt on the 16th hole during the second round of the Valspar Championship. (Photo by Ryan Young/PGA TOUR)

By Brian Wacker
Jordan Spieth had just missed a 20-footer for birdie on the par-3 13th hole Friday at the Valspar Championship when an older woman in the gallery turned to the person next to her and said, “He was such a good putter for so long.”

Ouch.

The lengthy putt was hardly a gimme but the line was also telling.

Spieth came into this week ranked 163rd on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting. He didn’t improve on that after rounds of 76-71 to miss the cut and losing nearly 1 1/2 strokes to the field on the greens at Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course.

“I made a lot of progress in that West Coast swing and then these last two weeks I took a step back unfortunately,” said Spieth, who added that he had a long conversation about his putting with his coach Cameron McCormick on Thursday night.

Still, with the Masters less than a month away Spieth’s putting has now become a thing.

The 24-year-old three-time major winner has ranked in the top 20 in putting three of the last four years, including second in 2016. But this year he said he has struggled with his setup, adding that his eyes are often pointed right of where his putter is lined up.

The results were disastrous at the Valspar, a tournament Spieth won in 2015.

In the opening round, he made just one putt over seven feet and took 30 putts in all, which included two three-putts. A day later, it took a dozen holes before Spieth made anything longer than five feet, finally holing a 15-footer to save par on the third hole. He made two more outside 10 feet over his final six holes but by then the damage had been done.

With the first major of the year looming, there is certainly some cause for concern. Spieth, though, is hopeful he can turn things around before then.

“I know that it’s close and that I’ve been saying that and not performing on what I’m saying,” he said. “But it’s something I just have to match my eyes up and then it clicks.”

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Jason Day’s putting was absurdly good at Pebble Beach — and it put him back in a familiar position

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 06:02:18 +0000

PEBBLE BEACH, CA – FEBRUARY 11: Jason Day acknowledges the fans on the 18th hole during the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links, on February 11, 2018 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ryan Young/PGA TOUR)

By Alex Myers
You obviously don’t get to the top of the Official World Golf Ranking without a solid all-around game. But when Jason Day was really rolling from the summer of 2015 to the spring of 2016, it was mainly due to how he was rolling his golf ball on the greens. Day finished sixth on the PGA Tour in strokes gained: putting in the 2014-15 season and first in the stat in 2015-16.

And after slipping to 39th during a difficult 2017, Day leads again in the tour’s best putting evaluation metric thanks to having the best week on the greens of anyone in the new season.

Day finished T-2 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but he was No. 1 in SGP for the tournament — and it wasn’t even close. Day finished the week with a sparkling SGP of +3.616, meaning he gained 3.616 shots on the field per round on the greens, or nearly 14.5 shots for the event. In fact, Day was more than one stroke per round better than the next best putter in the field last week.

Previously, J.B. Holmes’s SGP of +3.463 at the Farmers Insurance Open (won by Day) was the best in 10 tour events that have tracked the stat this season. No one else has posted anything above +3.0 in 2017-18.

For the season, Day now leads the tour in the stat at +1.861, which explains why he already has a win and a runner-up in his first two starts of 2018 despite poor play from tee to green. The Aussie currently ranks only 94th in strokes gained: tee-to-green, dragged down by a dismal 189th in strokes gained: approach-the-green.

“If I keep doing what I’m doing,” said Day, who won seven times in 17 starts from 2015-2016, on Sunday, “finishing first and second in the first two events, but also improve that and kind of cut out the blemishes, then hopefully it will be more like 2015.”

It already is when he gets on the green.

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