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Sung Kang Continues the Tour’s Trend of Unknown Champions

By Bill Felber

DALLAS, TEXAS - MAY 12: Sung Kang of Korea celebrates after winning the AT&T Byron Nelson at Trinity Forest Golf Club on May 12, 2019 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
DALLAS, TEXAS - MAY 12: Sung Kang of Korea celebrates after winning the AT&T Byron Nelson at Trinity Forest Golf Club on May 12, 2019 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images) /
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Sung Kang ended up winning the Byron Nelson by two shots, shooting -23. He’s the fourth first-time PGA Tour winner since April.

Sung Kang continues the trend, and the way tour events have gone the past month, picking a victor at next week’s PGA Championship should be easy.

All you need to do is identify a player who is winless in at least 50 career starts, and who ranks outside the top 60 on the FedEx Cup points list. It also appears to help if nobody’s ever heard of the guy.

Save for that Tiger Woods interlude at The Masters, that’s been the winning formula at all four individual play tour stops since early April. Here, with their FedEx Cup ranks and winless starts entering the event, are the names of the winners:

      Tournament            Champion                      FedEx Rank            Starts

  • Valero                   Corey Conners                      64                         48
  • RBC Heritage      C.T. Pan                                118                         78
  • Wells Fargo         Max Homa                          138                         68
  • Byron Nelson     Sung Kang                             71                       158

All in all, it begins to look favorable for Tyrrell Hatton at Bethpage Black. He checks all the boxes: No wins in 49 career starts, a 93rd FedEx Cup ranking and a face you couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

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Kang’s victory at the Nelson just kept the streak of first-time winners going. He was the ninth this season alone, and he closed it out by two strokes over Matt Every and Scott Piercy.

As is frequently the case on Tour, the Nelson turned into a putting contest. Kang won by compiling a 10.3 Strokes Gained Putting advantage over the field, including 4.21 on Friday when he shot 61. For the season as a whole, Kang usually only picks up a fraction more than one-third of a stroke on the greens for every four tournament rounds he plays.

What of Brooks Koepka, for whom this was supposed to be a tuneup to the defense of the title he won last August at Bellerive? Koepka finished fourth, three strokes behind Kang, because his weaknesses on and around the greens did him in.

Koepka actually putted well at the Nelson, posting a 6.02 Strokes Gained score on the greens that, not coincidentally, was four strokes inferior to Kang. In fact, 6.02 on the greens is about as good as Koepka can do; his season average is -.213 per round, or -0.85 for a four-round event.

Koepka offset that deficit with his driving and iron play, But his short game, never a particular strength, turned into a millstone at the Nelson. He lost a stroke and a half to the field around the greens while Kang gained about 2.2 strokes.

PGA Championship: Tiger Woods headlines featured tee times at Bethpage Black. dark. Next

Those short-game shortcomings will be a focal point for Koepka next week. He has never been a strong chipper, but his 2019 performance is off even from the mid-pack recovery scores he produced as recently as last season. He ranked 38th in Strokes Gained Around The Green in 2018. He enters the PGA ranked 125th in that skill.

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