The PGA Tour’s 10 Biggest Disappointments of 2021/22
By Bill Felber
7. Matt Wallace
How much worse? (0.806 strokes)
Wallace was one of the big benefactors of the LIV Tour defections. Those departures elevated him at season’s end into the FedEx Cup playoffs even though, finishing outside the top 125, he would not otherwise have qualified.
That was the only bright spot for the 32-year-old English player. He will have to prove in 2023 that his regression this season was an anomaly rather than a trend.
Wallace’s scoring average rose from 70.594 to 71.4 strokes in 2021-22, a failure of more than eight-tenths of a stroke. In real terms, he fell from 51st to 154th in stroke average.
Here’s the chart on Wallace.
2020-21 2021-22 Change
Off The Tee 0.106 -0.450 -0.556
Approaches 0.443 -0.109 -0.552
Around the Green 0.214 -0.123 -0.337
Putting 0.112 -0.003 -0.115
Wallace’s performance fall, especially coming in his early 30s – a time when players ought to be on the rise – was not because of one thing. In fact, it was a little bit of everything.
Entering 2022, Wallace’s best asset was his iron play. That’s significant because iron play correlates most closely with scoring, so a strong approach game is a very productive asset.
But it went the other way for Wallace in 2022. The same approach game that produced more than a four-tenths advantage against the field in 2021 turned into a modest liability one season later.
The other three aspects of Wallace’s game, all modest assets in previous seasons, each became a liability in 2022. Easily the most profound was slippage in his game off the tee, which regressed by more than half a stroke.
The results showed up at the pay window; Wallace made about $400,000 less in 2022 than he had the previous season.