Rocket Mortgage Classic: Nate Lashley was simply the season’s best

Nate Lashley rides a hot putter to the most dominant performance of the 2019 season to date, a six-stroke victory at the Rocket Mortgage Classic

The backstory to Nate Lashley’s victory this weekend at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit, involving as it does the deaths of his parents and his girlfriend in a plane crash returning from watching him play in a college tournament, is compelling. Compelling enough, in all likelihood, to obscure the fashion and detail of his victory.

That would do a dis-service to Lashley, whose six-stroke victory, with a winning total of 25-under par 263, was statistically the season’s most dominant to date.

His rounds of 63-67-63-70 translated to 3.36 standard deviations better than the field average of the 70 players who completed competitive four-round totals.* That translates to 3.36 standard deviations better than the 276.43 field average.

Prior to Sunday, the most dominant performance of the 2019 season belonged to Phil Mickelson, whose three-stroke victory at the AT&T National at Pebble Beach in February measured 3.34 standard deviations superior to the field average.

When you out-shoot Phil Mickelson at his best, you’ve done something.

The victory was the first of the 36-year-old Lashley’s 33-tournament career, which began following his graduation from the University of Arizona in 2005,  then quickly detoured through club work interspersed with forays on to minor American, Canadian and Latin tours.

He returned in 2018 to compete in 17 events and finished 172nd on the FedEx Cup list.

In a sense, Lashley’s victory ratifies what the tour has spent most of the season demonstrating: that especially in the non-spotlight events, anything goes.

The unlikelihood of his victory is superficially enhanced by the fact that he was the final qualifier, as if that means anything. For a reality check, here is a list of this season’s first-time champions: Cameron Champ, Adam Long, Martin Trainer, Keith Mitchell, Corey Conners, C. T. Pan, Max Homa, Sung Kang, and now Nate Lashley.

Even to slow learners, the lesson ought to be obvious: Any of these guys, even the last man in, has a legit chance to win.

How did Lashley do it after all these years? The first thing to understand about his showing this week is that he’s been building, albeit slowly, toward it. In his previous 14 2019 starts, Lashley had four top 20 finishes. Granted, they were all in weaker fields on the winter swing, and further granted that only one – a tie for eighth in Puerto Rico – cracked the top 10.

With about $550,000 in seasonal winnings and enough FedEx Cup points to at least sniff the top 125,  he was beginning to eke out a living, if not a stylish one, even before teeing it up in Detroit.

Lashley won by applying the most tried and true of all tour formulas: minimize your weaknesses and putt like the dickens. Coming into the tournament, his weaknesses and strengths were obvious. He has been indifferent off the tee, giving away an average of a quarter-stroke per round in that area. At the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Lashley neutralized that issue and actually turned it into a minor plus, picking up about two-tenths of a stroke on the field off the tee per round.

He’s also been neutral at best around the greens, a fact reflected by his -0.77 Strokes Gained average in that area. In Detroit, Lashley chipped well, gaining nearly a half-stroke per round on the field thanks to his short game.

His strength all season has been his iron game. That has netted Lashley nearly two-thirds of a stroke advantage per round on the field. In Detroit, Lashley maximized that edge, gaining 1.4 strokes per round thanks to the precision of his irons.

Putting has been a come-and-go thing. For the season, Lashley has been a competent, if not exceptional putter, with a 0.23 Strokes Gained average his fellow tour players would consider decent. But there have been bad stretches. When his putting game left him this spring, Lashley missed cuts at the Arnold Palmer, the Zurich and the RBC Canadian.

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At the U.S. Open, in which he finished in a credible if anonymous tie for 28th, Lashley puzzled over Pebble Beach’s greens. His -.178 Strokes Gained putting score probably cost him a few places in the standings.

In Detroit, however, the putting touch that seems to follow winners around attached itself to Lashley. He averaged 2.33 Strokes Gained on the greens per round, more than half of his overall 4.34 Strokes gained advantage over the field.

This does not (necessarily) mean that Lashley has become an exceptional putter…almost every tour champion enjoys a fleeting romance with his putter during that magical championship week. Those romances usually cool off in a few days.

It is an odd, and seemingly contradictory fact that while the season-long correlation between Strokes Gained Putting and Stroke Average rarely surpasses a tepid 35 percent, virtually every tour winner rides a hot putter to victory. That’s what Nate Lashley did this week.

For the record, Nate Lashley entered the week ranked only 57th in Strokes Gained Putting for the season. At week’s start, the tour leader in Strokes Gained Putting was Dominic Bozzelli. If you’re wondering, Bozzelli entered the week tied for 95th in Stroke Average. He has one top-10 finish this season.

*In calculating standard deviation, outlying scores — those more than a half standard deviation worse than all others — are discarded. There was one such outlying score at Detroit this week, explaining why only 70 of the 71 final scores were included in the determination of the standard deviation.