Brooks Koepka wins it on the moss with strong putting performance
By Bill Felber
As is often the case, the WGC FedEx St. Jude is decided on the greens and was this week for Brooks Koepka.
The least surprising thing about Brooks Koepka’s victory Sunday at the WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational – other, obviously, than that Koepka won – was his dominance on the greens. Brooks Koepka led the field in Strokes Gained Putting, picking up a 9.346 stroke advantage over the field thanks to that aspect of his game. On tour, that’s what winners do.
His -16 264 beat Webb Simpson by three strokes with Mark Leishman another stroke behind. For the record, Simpson placed second in Strokes Gained Putting at 6.826, while Leishman stood sixth at 4.631. That means literally 84 percent of Koepka’s edge over Simpson came on the greens.
It’s not surprising that the leader in Strokes Gained Putting would win the tournament because these days it is rare – not impossible but unlikely – for a player to win a PGA Tour event without at least showing well on the greens.
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Since Tiger Woods’ April victory at The Masters, there have been a dozen front-line PGA Tour events at which Strokes Gained Data was maintained. In half of those dozen, the eventual winner also finished either first or second in Strokes Gained Putting. Only one, Koepka during his PGA Championship run in May, took his title without finishing among the top 10 in putting.
Those numbers illustrate the enduring mystery and irony of the PGA Tour. If it is virtually impossible to win without dominating the greens, why do the tour’s best putters so rarely win?
Based on season-long data, here is the current list of the 10 best putters on tour for the 2018-19 season:
Player SG Putting
- Denny McCarthy .973
- Dominic Bozzelli .897
- Graeme McDowell .789
- Andrew Putnam .780
- Justin Rose .778
- Vaughn Taylor .746
- Jordan Spieth .713
- Brandt Snedeker .697
- Beau Hossler .694
- Wyndham Clark .664
For all the statistical importance of putting on Tour, this is not an especially august group of players. Collectively these 10 lay claim to just two 2019 titles, and one of those – McDowell’s March victory at Puntacana – came in an alternate field event. Only Rose’s win at the January Farmers Insurance Open came against a legitimate field of tour regulars.
The average standing of the tour’s 10 best putters on the current FedEx Cup list is 74th. That’s good enough to make the field, but far from good enough to contend.
From week-to-week, the tournament winner follows the pattern displayed this week by Brooks Koepka. He is an average putter who happens to strike it lucky. Of the dozen events since the Masters alluded to earlier, the average rank of the eventual winner on the season-long Strokes Gained Putting list is 82nd with an average gain on the greens of about one-fifth of a stroke per round.
Yet during their winning weeks, those usually average putters gained an average of 6.88 strokes – that’s 1.72 strokes per round — due to their work on the greens. That’s about a nine-fold improvement on their week-to-week work.
That’s more or less the approach Brooks Koepka took in Memphis. For the season he ranks 101st in Strokes Gained Putting, gaining only a bit more than a tenth of a stroke advantage per round. Yet in winning his 9.35 Strokes Gained edge translated to 2.34 strokes per round.
Why is it that the best performers at the most important skill don‘t regularly win events? There is no obvious answer to this question. One potential explanation would be that putting is a more homogenized skill than driving, hitting greens or scrambling. By that theory, consistent excellence would convey only a diminished advantage because there was less of a spread between the best and worst putters on tour.
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The problem is the math doesn’t support that conclusion. The standard deviation of putting skill on tour – the normal spread – is a fraction more than three-tenths of a stroke. That is slightly lower than the standard deviation for Strokes Gained Off The Tee (0.39) or Approaching the Green (0.37), but higher than the Standard Deviation for Strokes Gained Around the Green (0.21).