The Sony Open playoff: Coping well or poorly with weaknesses

Ther Sony Open came down to a playoff. How players deal with pressure in these situations often determine who wins. Cameron Smith does, Brendan Steele doesn’t, and that difference is decisive.

Tournaments that come down to sudden-death playoffs are often decided by chance events. A player who all week has mastered each facet of the game but one finds himself, at the critical moment, called on to execute the only skill that has eluded him all week. That element of chance is why Cameron Smith, not Brendan Steele, is champion of the 2020 Sony Open.

Steele, winless since the Safeway more than two years ago, came to the final hole at Waialae Sunday needing a par to wrap up a one-stroke win over Smith. To that point Steele’s week had been virtually ideal.

For the 2019 season, his approach game, his putting and his recovery skills had all been sub-standard by the standards of Strokes Gained. Yet at Waialae, he had picked up 1.6 strokes per round thanks to virtually unerring iron play, and another 1.5 strokes per round on the greens.

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And the impact of his only ongoing weakness, his recovery game, was minimized by his relatively accurate iron play. Steele hit 51 of the tournament’s 72 greens in regulation, not a spectacular showing but strong for Steele.

But following a superb drive at the par 5 18th, Steele misfired a long iron approach, yanking it well left of the green. The ball struck the roof of the grandstand and landed a long way from its intended target. Initially, though, even that worked out; the grandstand gave Steele a free drop in an area about 65 yards from the green where the idea of getting up and down was totally plausible.

Steele, however, pitched short, missed his putt and when Smith birdied the two men proceeded to a playoff at the 10th hole.

There, Steele again found the fairway and appeared to have the upper hand when Smith blocked his drive well to the right off some trees. But after Smith maneuvered his approach onto the green and within 15 feet of the hole, Steele sailed his own approach into the fringe behind the green and about 30 feet from the cup.

Again the recovery wasn’t all that difficult…except it happened to be the one shot Steele profiled to hit poorly. Indeed, he contacted it thin, and the ball skidded 15 feet past the hole. Still away, Steele missed coming back, opening the door for Smith to win with a simple two-putt, which Smith proceeded to do.

The recovery game is the least-utilized tool in any player’s skill set for the obvious reason that if you’re chipping or pitching for birdie, you won’t be around long. In Steele’s case, the 20 recoveries he employed during the Sony happened to precisely match his usual four-round average.

It was his bad fortune to have such a shot demanded of him at the worst possible moment…the moment at which the playoff was to be decided. That recovery shots happened to be his worst skill set, routinely costing him a quarter of a shot per round, only worsened the circumstance.

Fortune can operate for good as well as for ill. That’s what happened for Smith on that final hole. When he pushed his drive off to the edge of those trees to the right of the playoff hole, it required him to call on his own weakest skill…approaches. In maneuvering that 120-yard approach to the middle of the green, Smith overcame that weakness. For the entire tournament, he had lost two-tenths of a stroke to the field thanks to his approach game.

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The short of the Sony Open, then, is that both players were required to face their worst demons on the playoff hole. Smith overcame his; Steele could not master his. That’s why Smith won.

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