Sony Open Recap: How eight of the PGA TOUR’s best fell short

With a 13-under par score of 277, the defending Masters champion tied for 13th pace at the Sony Open. As frequently happens on the PGA TOUR, he played steadily – rounds of 68-66-68-65 – and well, but just not well enough.

With more than 140 players of roughly equal ability competing weekly, it often isn’t enough to play well, or even to significantly exceed your predicted level of play. It may well be necessary to play out of your gourd. Reed clearly did the first and arguably did the second. He did not, however, do the third; Kuchar did.

Reed had one of his better weeks on the greens. His per-round 1.42 Strokes Gained Putting was substantially better than his mediocre 0.14 2019 season average. It also enabled him to stay close to Kuchar, who had an even slightly hotter week, gaining 1.76 strokes per round on the greens when measured against his 2019 seasonal average. And since Reed’s 70.69 stroke average was virtually identical to Kuchar’s 70.68, staying close in Kuchar’s best category was a very good sign.

Unfortunately for Reed, the remainder of his game failed to accelerate at the same rate at Waialae. He had a nice week off the tee, picking up four-tenths of a stroke per round.  By Reed’s own standard, however, that was to be expected; in fact, for the season he’d averaged nearly a half stroke gain off the tee.

His weakness this season has been his approach game, where Reed has given back four-tenths of  a stroke per  round. At Waialae he overcame that handicap, actually gaining one-quarter of a stroke per round. By comparison with Kuchar, however, that was a problem, because the approach game always plays to Kuchar’s strength, and it did so again last week. Averaging about a half-stroke gain per round, he out-did himself at Waialae, gaining 1.38 strokes per round.

That left only the area around the green for Reed to make up room on the winner. It’s a space where Patrick has been just average this season, and nothing changed in Hawaii.  The composite was a 1.79 stroke per round improvement on his usual performance, which was solid except by comparison with Kuchar’s 4.27 stroke per round pickup.

In short, Reed had a very nice, comfortable week, the kind that could be expected to keep him on the outer fringes of contention. That sounds like a tie for 13th.