Before you ask, Tiger doesn’t play until Saturday.

2021 by the numbers

As he is prone to do, Justin Ray wrote a great article for PGATour.com yesterday. Ray recapped 2021 by walking through his favorite PGA Tour statistics of the year.

We recommend reading the full piece, but here are a couple of highlights:

+14.58 – Patrick Cantlay’s Strokes Gained: Putting at the BMW Championship – The duel between Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau at the BMW Championship at Caves Valley was one of the better PGA Tour finishes we can remember. The two traded haymakers for hours before Cantlay came out on top. The main reason he won was that he seemed to be putting into a hole the size of a basketball hoop: Cantlay’s SG: Putting on the week was the best in ShotLink history.

50 – Phil Mickelson’s age when he won the PGA Championship in May – Yep, this one is still melting our minds. The other major winners this season were all in their 20s! But here’s another number for you: 1. That’s the number of top 10s Phil has recorded on the PGA Tour in the past 500 days. Here’s to making your good weeks count!

And here are two figures we’d like to toss into the mix (keep in mind that we’re not as good at this as J-Ray!):

13 – Number of players who averaged over 310 yards off the tee in the 2020-21 season – This isn’t a record (14 achieved the feat in 2018), but it does represent a new status quo. Between 2003—when the Titleist ProV1x made its debut—and 2016, the “310 club” typically consisted of two to five players. That number has jumped up over the past five years. While this new normal can’t be pinned on a specific technological advance, we suspect that the increased use and understanding of launch-monitor data has something to do with it.

8 – Events in the 2021 calendar year in which Collin Morikawa recorded positive SG: Putting – And Morikawa won three of those events! Whether this is a sustainable way for him to keep racking up generational results remains to be seen. But right now, when he’s rolling it well, the best iron player since Tiger Woods is tough to beat.

The Latest from The Fried Egg

The Fried Egg Podcast: Bees Can Guide Us to the Future of Golf (Seriously) – Parker Anderson (@greener_golf) joins the podcast this week to discuss golf’s relationship with the environment and what it may look like in the future. Also, bees. Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.

The Shotgun Start – The Year in Review has finally gotten through the second major championship of the year. Two weeks remain in December. Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Quick Hooks

The PGA Tour made a compilation video of Tiger Woods and his son Charlie using similar mannerisms on the golf course. Then they filmed Tiger watching it. Meta, but wholesome.

In an oddly filmed video that nonetheless delivered happy news, Colt Knost announced that his role as an on-course reporter for CBS Sports will expand in 2022.

Brentley Romine wrote a good piece for Golf Channel on why the LPGA Tour needs a program similar to PGA Tour University to help promote young talent.