The revitalization of Stewart Cink

By now you’re probably trying to figure out what’s gotten in to Stewart Cink.

Cink won the RBC Heritage Sunday, breezing home four strokes ahead of Harold Varner. It was vintage Cink, and by vintage we refer to his eight career Tour victories, one of them a Major, two previously coming in this event and two coming this season.

He is one of only two players to win twice on Tour this season. The other is Bryson DeChambeau. Nice company.

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The problem, obviously, is that prior to this season Cink had been reduced to a Tour afterthought. Until he took home the Safeway last September, Cink had not won in 247 starts over more than a decade, since claiming his memorable playoff victory over Tom Watson at the 2009 British Open.

He was 35 at the Brit. He’s 47 today – an age when Tour pros are grooming their games for senior events. Yet he’s improbably on the precipice of enjoying the best season, from a money standpoint, of his career. Already Cink has won more than $3.2 million. His personal best came in 2008 when he won about $3.9 million.

So to repeat the question, what in the name of Ponce DeLeon has gotten in to Stewart Cink this season?

A look at the data suggests a few answers. First and most obviously, he is longer off the tee. Cink’s average drive in 2021 covers 305.4 yards. That’s a career best, and not by a small amount; his previous best was 298.1 yards in 2018. His career average prior to 2021 was 288.6 yards.

When he won at Safeway, Cink’s drives averaged 315.6 yards. This week at Harbor Town he averaged 311.9.

So Cink has gotten significantly longer in recent months. But that’s not the whole story; in fact it may not even be much of it. Despite that gain in raw length, Cink’s Strokes Gained Off The Tee numbers have not changed appreciably. In fact his average 2021 Strokes Gained Tee score is negative, -0.61. That’s not significantly different from his career -0.07 score off the tee.

The strength of Cink’s game has always been his command of his approach irons, and in his two 2021 victories he has capitalized on that strength. In 2021 he has averaged 0.336 Strokes Gained Approaching the green, slightly off his career average of 0.50. But in his Safeway and RBC Heritage victories, Cink dialed in his approaches, gaining 1.291 strokes on the field at Safeway and 2.135 strokes at Heritage. He ranked second in the field this week in Strokes Gained Approaching the green.

And on the rare occasions when he missed, Cink turned that potential liability into an asset. He gained 0.892 strokes per round on the field in his play around the green, the week’s fifth best showing. At Safeway he gained 0.494 strokes on the field.

Since Cink has never been especially adept around the greens – his 2021 and career Strokes Gained Around average are -0.109 and -0.036 respectively – that ability to erase mistakes was a major advantage at both Safeway and RBC.

Cink also putted sensationally at Safeway – something he did not repeat at the RBC, where he ranked only t25 in Strokes Gained on the Green. But his iron play was so consistent that he didn’t need to dominate the greens this week.

In fairness to the facts it must be pointed out that Cink has competed in 15 events thus far this season, and has only landed one top 10 aside from those two wins. He’s also missed five cuts. So one possible explanation for Cink’s restored presence near the top of many Tour statistical charts has to do with merely having two freakishly hot weeks. That sort of thing could happen to anybody.

On Tour, however, the least important question is often “how?” The data generally speaks for itself. For the present, this is the data:

• That $3.2 million ranks Cink 11th in official money. He finished 139th last season, and 180th the season before that.
• He’s third in FedEx Cup points, behind only DeChambeau and Justin Thomas. He was 144th in 2020 and 179th in 2019.
• When the new Official World Golf Rankings are updated Monday, Cink will doubtless ride his weekend victory to a place somewhere among the top 100, probably well inside it. At season’s start, he ranked 319th.