What an average putting game could do for Collin Morikawa
The Californian has won two of his first eight Majors and is already a superstar. But how much better could it get if he could just fix his aberrant putting game?
The Man
After July’s Open Championship at Royal St George’s, there was an interesting discussion on the number one golf podcast, No Laying Up.
The No Laying Up gang are—mostly, and unshakably—fully paid up members of the Jordan Spieth Fan Club.
When Spieth broke through in the middle of the last decade, his demeanour on and off the golf course won him an informal recognition as ‘The Kid’, a pointer to his fearlessness and ambition and youth.
After Collin Morikawa won in England, one of the team—no doubt mindful of straying into blasphemy against Spieth—asked the question, “Is Morikawa ‘The Kid’ now?”
The answer came immediately, “No, he’s too polished. If you’re going to be The Kid you gotta be a little more dangerous. The whole point of being The Kid is pretending like you’re one of the adults when you’re not quite there. Morikawa is an adult … He might be The Man.”
It was a well-made point.
While the likes of Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods might never have been given the nickname publicly, they all strode around the place like The Man.
In the eyes of many golf fans, Morikawa is no longer just a coming force. He is well on the way to becoming The Man.
The Numbers
It’s just over two years since he turned pro, and his numbers alone since then mark him out as something extraordinary:
Twenty-two consecutive made cuts at the start of his pro career, behind only Tiger Woods, who made 25 in 1996-97.
Five wins from 53 tournaments on the PGA Tour, including two Majors (2020 US PGA Championship, and 2021 Open Championship)
Two wins in first eight Majors (first since Bobby Jones in 1926 to do so)
First player to win two different majors in his first attempt
The only player in the last 12 Major tournaments to win with a bogey-free final round (and he’s done it twice)
The only player in the past 25 years to win multiple Majors with bogey-free final rounds
Tournament wins in each of his first three years on tour (the last two players to manage that feat were Tiger Woods in 1996-98 and Dustin Johnson in 2008-10)
To many of those who witnessed that final round masterclass at The Open this summer—when he started a shot behind third round leader Louis Oosthuizen but was the embodiment of serenity as he carded four birdies and 14 pars and experienced hardly a moment of anything even resembling nerves, never mind distress—Morikawa looked to some almost uncannily like an identikit Tiger Woods.
His approach play is undoubtedly the best since Woods.
Following the year-ending Tour Championship earlier this month, on the “strokes gained approach” stats for the year (effectively measuring how good a second shot player someone is), he gains 1.17 strokes on the field per round1.
To give that supremacy some perspective, the gap in strokes gained approach between Morikawa in first and Paul Casey in second (.295 strokes per round) is greater than the gap between Casey in second and Charley Hoffman all the way down in 16th.
When it comes to iron play, Morikawa is, literally, head and shoulders above the rest.
So, all told, by doing things not done since Bobby Jones, doing them in a manner that calls to mind Tiger Woods, and demonstrating vast superiority over the rest with his iron play, Morikawa is a big, big deal. Calling him The Man is not inappropriate.
The Achilles Heel
But one of the most interesting things about Morikawa is just how godawful bad his putting has been.
Even a quick glance at his “strokes gained putting” statistics shows the discrepancy between Morikawa’s exceptional long game and how he fares when he gets to the short grass.
For the 2021 season, according to data compiled by DataGolf, Morikawa is tied 36th in strokes gained off the tee, placing him inside the top 20%, while his iron play, as noted above, is miles better than anyone.
It’s when he gets to the green, though, that things start to go wrong.
In strokes gained putting stats, he’s way down the pack: 178th of the 196 players tracked at the end of the 2021 season.
Literally, over 90 percent of players on the PGA Tour putt better than Morikawa.
Nor is this just a one-season blip.
Even in his Major-breakthrough year, COVID-interrupted 2020, Morikawa was 2nd in approach, 19th off the tee and 5th in tee to green figures, but only 128th in putting.
The 25-year-old is not the first top class pro to struggle with his putting game, and he certainly won’t be the last.
But the point of this exercise is not to lament another pro struggling with the blade. Instead, it’s an attempt at pure speculation.
Just how much is Morikawa’s putting game costing him?
The methodology here is admittedly a little crude, but it’s designed to be indicative rather than scientific. We’re not after a hole by hole analysis of Morikawa’s putting data here. Instead, what we’re trying to demonstrate is the general summation offered by season-long round-by-round averages.
Morikawa played 83 competitive rounds in 2021, of which 66 were measured for strokes gained purposes2.
Rather than doing a round-by-round analysis of Morikawa’s 2021, we took a look at his year and consider how it might have been different if he could manage even an average putting performance over the course of the season.
First, a caveat.
As the golf writer Ben Coley adeptly put it on Twitter after The Open in July, Morikawa is not just below average every week. He is volatile, meaning on the weeks when his putter works, he is almost certain to be difficult to beat.
But still, the stats merit further study and consideration. If Morikawa could decrease the downside of that volatility, how good could things get?
So let’s dive into the stats.
On average, Morikawa is -0.48 in strokes gained putting over the year. In plain English, he loses half a shot a round to the field on the greens, so over the course of a 72-hole tournament, that equates to—on average and with a little rounding—two shots lost on the greens in every tournament.
Over the course of a year, what might that mean to Morikawa?
Well, let’s take a look at his tournament earnings in 2021.
According to PGA Tour data, Morikawa’s total tournament earnings in 2021 is $7,059,908.
Now, how might that look if, on average, he was able to produce even an average putting game over the course of a season?
Here’s his putative per tournament earnings when we subtract two strokes from his final tally in every tournament (i.e., bringing him back to an average strokes gained putting score of 0).
Over the entire 2021, an average putting game might have given Morikawa an additional $2.2 million, taking his year earnings to well over $9 million.
When we consider that Jon Rahm led the money list in 2021 with $7.7 million in tournament earnings, that gives a glimpse into the kind of dominance even a decent putting game would give Morikawa.
Looking at the data since the turn of the century, the difference between Morikawa-as-is and Morikawa-with-average-putting-game becomes even more apparent.
From 2000 to now
We took a look at top season by season earners over the 22 PGA Tour seasons since 2000.
First, a couple of disclaimers.
While we do think it is an apples-to-apples comparison, it’s definitely not comparing September-harvested organic Golden Delicious to September-harvested organic Golden Delicious. Inflation is a factor, as with any money comparison over time.
Also, the so-called “Tiger Tax”, while almost impossible to quantify, is without doubt a key element. (This analysis by No Laying Up from several years ago estimates that Tiger Woods’s combination of otherworldly golf and mass appeal had increased prize money and endorsements that even by then an additional $1.2 BILLION had been deposited into the bank accounts of his competitors…)
So, all told, a dollar earned on the PGA Tour in 2001 is not exactly the same as a dollar earned in 2021.
But taking those caveats into consideration, a look at the numbers—single-season dollars earned in tournament prize money on the PGA Tour—gives us a sense of where Morikawa stands, and where he could stand with an average putting game.
His earnings in 2021 leave him 32nd on the list of single-season earners since 2000.
And here’s how Morikawa’s 2021 might have ranked if he had managed even 0 in strokes gained putting stats for the year (i.e. was not losing half a stroke a round on the greens).
All told, while Morikawa’s putting is volatile, it could not yet be described as streaky—rarely do we go into a tournament thinking Morikawa’s greens game is in exceptional shape.
If he is to become The Man and stay there, then sorting out this part of the game will be a big part of that achievement.
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For those unfamiliar with strokes gained data, it’s a rabbit warren of information on golf performances by the numbers. This podcast interview with Mark Broadie, developer of the strokes gained methodology, is highly recommended for a deeper understanding of the nuances involved.
(Aside: Among the notable absences is the data for his Open Championship success, where there is a different data gathering arrangement in place, one that leaves rank and file golf fans grasping at straws.
As Daniel Rapaport wrote in Golf Digest after Morikawa’s Open win in July:
[S]trokes-gained data [are] the lifeblood of golf stats nerds everywhere. The Open has fallen woefully behind in this department. There is no live tracking of any holes, and the only stats available on the website are the now-antiquated fairways hit, greens in regulation and putting average. For one of the world’s biggest golf tournament to, in 2021, still be stuck in the analog age defies belief.
In time the aim is to create a monthly subscription plan for those who find this newsletter valuable, but for 2021, and probably into 2022, all editions of The Wedge will be available free to read for everyone.