by Partially inspired by Rory McIlroy’s potentially underrated short game, I’ve decided to tier the best short game players in the world this week. This is not the most straightforward exercise, so don’t get too up in arms if you disagree with an inclusion or an omission, but I’m confident the graphic paints a strong portrayal of the best short games in the world. Plus, a check-in on a previously spotlighted golfer and, as always, answering a reader-submitted question.
Tiering the Short Game Kings
A few notes:
I’ve long believed that Patrick Reed has the best short game in the world. Going through this exercise only strengthened that belief. Looking at Strokes Gained: Around the Green over the past ten PGA Tour seasons, Reed is the only golfer who played at least five seasons and never finished outside the top 30 in that statistic. If my life depended on a player winning a short-game contest, I’m taking Reed.
Some may argue that Rory McIlroy doesn’t belong on this list. I disagree. Over the last ten PGA Tour seasons, McIlroy’s average SG: Around the Green rank is 41, an impressive number. Furthermore, McIlroy tends to play a tough schedule, which tends to include courses where getting up and down is more difficult than the average Tour course. Strokes Gained doesn’t account for that. It’s not like he’s fluffing his numbers at PGA West. Rory should be thought of as a top-tier short game player.
For the purposes of this exercise, I didn’t consider Luke Donald an active player. Otherwise, he’d absolutely be on this list.
Perhaps I’m somewhat stating the obvious, but it is remarkable how much short game talent comes out of Australia. Relatedly, Aaron Baddeley’s short-game stats are wildly impressive.
Lots of Augusta National success in this graphic. Coincidence? No!
Player Spotlight: Nick Dunlap
Back in January, I wrote about Nick Dunlap, one of the most exciting young prospects in the sport. I wrote, “Dunlap is special, at least when he’s on. However, as he develops, he needs to improve his consistency. What has been the primary cause of some of his inconsistency? A tendency to absolutely spray the golf ball.”
His off-the-tee situation has not improved. Eight starts into his season, Dunlap is losing 1.48 strokes per round off the tee, trailed only by Brendon Todd (-2.2 SG/round). At the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Dunlap lost 3.8 strokes per round off the tee to the field. Last week at the Players Championship, he lost 3.9 strokes per round off the tee. He’s having a rough, rough go of it right now.
Nick seems lost with his full swing, but I don’t want to overreact to it. He’s 21 years old; some inconsistency should be expected. Especially as the standard continues to be raised in professional golf, I don’t think we’ll see many 20 to 22-year-olds with a polished enough game to compete consistently in signature events. Nevertheless, I have a few takeaways from watching him struggle over the last couple of months, especially last week at TPC Sawgrass:
1. Did Nick Dunlap turn pro too early at age 20?
I’m not going to say that. It’s way too early in Nick’s career to draw any conclusions about his process of turning professional, and cherry-picking the young pros while they’re actively struggling isn’t reasonable. Akshay Bhatia turned pro at age 17, and it has seemed to work out well for him.
However, professional golf is a stressful, lonely game. Golf is a challenging sport, with many of the world’s best hitting their strides somewhere between the ages of 28 and 33. For as much talk as there has been about the youth movement, Rory McIlroy is the most complete version of himself at age 35. J.J. Spaun just played the best tournament of his career at age 34. Xander Schauffele’s ascent to World No. 2 occurred last year at age 30.
I don’t blame Dunlap for seizing his opportunity last year and taking up PGA Tour membership at age 20. I suspect I would have done the exact same thing if I were in Nick’s shoes. Playing at the highest level provides an instructive barometer for where one’s game stacks up against the world’s best, and playing demanding setups alongside the best players in the world may very well be the best way to improve.
At the same time, struggling out in the open on the world’s biggest stages is frustrating and mentally taxing, and I’m eager to see how Dunlap responds to that. He has a two-year exemption on Tour and is exempt in all signature events this season, but he’s trending the wrong direction to qualify for signature events next year. Dunlap might end up being just fine; he’s extremely talented and other facets of his game are fairly strong right now. But yikes, the recent off-the-tee play is jarring.
2. Strokes Lost: On the Range Late at Night
I don’t place any stock in what I see from practice rounds. Based on my historical experience, I don’t think there’s much to be gleaned. I’ve watched too many golfers hit it terribly in a warm-up session or practice round and go on to play well in competition to place much weight on what happens on the golf course before Thursday.
However, I might buy into it being a bad sign when golfers are on the range struggling late into the evening the night before a tournament starts. Dunlap was exasperated on the range Wednesday evening before the Players Championship, toiling away and trying to find his game. Not everybody who is on the range late at night is struggling. For example, Stephan Jaeger was speed training on the range Friday evening. However, if a golfer looks distraught on the range the night before a big tournament, that might be a bad omen.
3. TPC Sawgrass eats struggling golfers alive
Perhaps my biggest takeaway from last week: if your game is off, you don’t want to play TPC Sawgrass. You’ll get exposed. The golf course requires precision and punishes poor shots, and it also doesn’t let players default to their comfortable stock shots. Trees, hazards, and angled fairways force players to work the ball both directions and hit shots with a variety of shapes and trajectories. If you’re not in command of your golf swing, you will not pass that test.
Max Homa isn’t in control of his golf ball right now, and Sawgrass did not treat him kindly. He posted a 79 on Thursday in calm conditions. Likewise, Dunlap didn’t stand much of a chance on that golf course and posted an 80 on Thursday.
Plenty of other PGA Tour venues enable players to fall back on stock shots and don’t punish errancy. You can get away with not having your best stuff at VidantaWorld. TPC Sawgrass reveals whose games are in a solid state.
Reader-Submitted Question
Reader: Any lasting takeaways from your experience on-site at the Players?
Answer: Between the Monday Fried Egg Newsletter, a piece I wrote about Alejandro Tosti, and some of the above, I’ve covered most of my on-the-ground notes. One thing from this Players that will stick with me the longest came from the excellent Sean Martin, who posted about Rory’s warm-up for the playoff holes.
To best prepare for the winds he’d face on the three-hole playoff, Rory was hitting shots in the same directions he’d see on the golf course and reorienting his Trackman each time to get as much information as possible for how shots would react in the wind. Did Spaun get a little unlucky with his shot traveling through the wind on 17 and into the water? Maybe, sure. But Rory’s success in the same situation came from both intelligent planning and execution.
More broadly, Rory deserves immense credit for his adaptability throughout the course of his career. Success over a long period of time is impossible unless athletes and coaches adapt to their ever-evolving crafts. Former longtime Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski isn’t just a legend because he knows a lot about basketball, he adapted his coaching philosophy over time, both in how he recruited and how his teams played on the court. Nick Saban had success at Alabama both with run-first offenses and later with pass-heavier offenses as the sport evolved. The best athletes, coaches, and game planners don’t remain anchored to the way they’ve always done things. They evolve.
Golfers can be hard-headed and stubborn. In some ways, McIlroy is both of those. During his appearance on the Fried Egg Eggsplorations pod, McIlroy discussed how he owns his swing and if he’s going to make changes to his swing, the changes need to be his own idea. He doesn’t respond to a coach dictating what he needs to do. That’s not his style.
What I appreciate about the evolution of McIlroy is his combination of open-mindedness and hard-headedness. There’s plenty of bad information floating around out there, and he does a good job of discerning what information can benefit his game and what is nonsense. For a significant stretch of his career, Rory routinely made poor on-course decisions tied to course management. He realized that, evolved, and now generally makes wiser decisions to avoid big numbers. He heavily leverages Trackman, one of the most useful tools at a player’s disposal, a device that rose to prominence during his career.
Many players who are in the back half of their careers are resistant to new ideas and new technologies. “It’s always worked when I do things this way, why would I change it?” That’s a common and sensible refrain from golfers, who are often resistant to change. But to be at the top of the game for nearly two decades, you must adapt and evolve your game, keeping what’s made you special and adding pieces that can take you to another level. McIlroy has done that, from leveraging Trackman to enhancing his course management to tidying his short game to dialing in three-quarter swings with his short irons, etc.
All of those components contributed to his success in winning the Players Championship this past week, and the scene of his warm-up session on Monday morning will stick with me for a long time.
Ok, that’s all for this week. Have a question you’d like me to answer for next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com!
