There are something like 100 stats for putting on the PGA Tour.
The best overall one is Strokes Gained: Putting. This measures a player’s putting performance by comparing their putting to a benchmark of how many strokes it takes the average PGA Tour professional golfer to make a putt from a given distance.
A positive strokes gained number means the player took fewer strokes than the benchmark while a negative number indicates the player took more strokes than the benchmark.
So this allows golfers to see how much they are gaining or losing relative to the field, providing a more meaningful performance indicator than simply counting total putts.
Europe Ryder Cup team strokes gained: Putting + Ranking
Rory McIlroy 0.597 7
Tommy Fleetwood 0.404 17
Matt Fitzpatrick 0.326 29
Bob MacIntyre 0.251 36
Sepp Straka 0.237 38
Justin Rose 0.155 55
Ludvig Aberg 0.051 86
Viktor Hovland -0.070 108
Shane Lowry -0.123 117
Rasmus Hojgaard -0.235 134
What do we learn from the above?
1) Rory McIlroy’s putter is a bona fide strength. It used to be streaky, occasionally poor and sometimes incredible but now it’s just a very solid part of his game. McIlroy holes a lot of putts and his method has become very simple and fluent.
2) Tommy Fleetwood is a surprise in second place and inside the best 20 putters on the PGA Tour. The eye test probably tells us something else, he hits a lot of greens and shots close but then seems to dribble putts wide. The reality is that he’s marginally a better putter than Scottie Scheffler.
3) Matt Fitzpatrick has been referred to as Europe’s best putter and the stats aren’t far off. He’s a top 10 on the DP World Tour and, from 10 feet, he is the 10th best putter on the PGA Tour.
The flagstick in method seems to have gone now so expect everyone to have the flag removed when having a decent chance of making one.
4) Europe have three players who are losing shots with their putter – Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry and Rasmus Hojgaard. Stats are not always conclusive and, if you look at the DP World Tour, then Hovland is seventh and Hojgaard inside the top 30 on the greens.
Lowry has spells where he can be very good or very ordinary and you would certainly put him in the category, like a Lee Westwood or Sergio Garcia, of being able to turn it on in matchplay.
5) Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm both play their golf on LIV but they are two of Europe’s finest. Hatton is outstanding and maybe one of the best while Rahm would likely be another top-20 on the greens.
Read next: Five killer Ryder Cup stats that will concern Europe
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Article Link: Ryder Cup: What key putting stats really reveal about Team Europe