How Sam Burns won at the Valspar

On the PGA Tour, winning is rarely accomplished simply by doing one thing extremely well. The competition level is such that winning usually requires doing many things extremely well. This week’s victory by Sam Burns at the Valspar provides a superb illustration of this reality. In claiming his first career victory by three strokes by three strokes over Keegan Bradley, Burns exceeded the bounds of his usual performance in every measurable facet of play.

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His ability to excel at every aspect was what enabled the fourth-year pro out of LSU to capture his first victory in 72 professional starts. His total of 267 was 3.11 standard deviations better than the Valspar four-round field average, making it – from a statistical standpoint – the most dominant victory on Tour this season.

This is one of those cases where the search for an answer as to what propelled Burns to his first career victory yields numerous answers, all of them at least partially valid.

Driving: Burns averaged 304.5 yards off the tee and hit 65 percent of his fairways. Neither of those numbers by itself is particularly noteworthy…except for Burns. He averaged better than a half stroke gained off the tee per round at the Valspar. For the full 2021 season to date, he has averaged less than a quarter stroke gain on the field thanks to his work off the tee.

GIR: Burns hit 42 of 72 greens in regulation during the week, a 58 percent performance. That’s not remarkable – he ranked only 55th in Greens in Regulation during the week. But his iron play was honed in sufficiently to rank 14th in Strokes Gained Approaching the Green with an average of 0.928 strokes gained per round.

That’s nearly twice as productive as Burns (0.482) usually is in the category.

And it translated to the scorecard. During Sunday’s final round, Burns left himself birdie putts of 3.5, 5.3 and 2 feet — all of which he made — on the first, second and 14th holes. That’s a winning strategy.

Saving par: Burns’ short game work gained him an additional 0.409 strokes per round this week. Stroke-saving is normally his weakness; Burns has averaged -0.198 Strokes Gained Around the Green this season. Yet at the Valspar  he managed to stand among the tournament’s top 25 in that category…not great but solid.

Putting:  Burns is usually a competent putter. For the season he has averaged 0.561 Strokes Gained Putting. That’s top 25 level.

But at Valspar Burns cranked it up several notches. On Sunday alone he dropped birdie putts of 26, 15 and 18 feet, rolling in a combined 92.5 feet worth of putts. He finished the week having averaged 2.274 Strokes Gained Putting – about four times his normal productivity – and ranking third in the field in that category.

Among his closest competitors, runner-up Keegan Bradley finished 38th in Strokes Gained Putting, Viktor Hovland was 21st and Cameron Tringale seventh.

There was, in other words, no single element of his game that propelled Burns to his victory. He over-performed his track record across the board.

In a sense, that’s bad news for him since it’s unlikely that Burns will string such exceptional showings together with anything approaching regularity. That’s what makes winning on Tour so difficult.

On the other hand, he at least has the satisfaction of knowing that at age 24 he’s done it once, which is a lot more than most Tour pros can say.