The Great Equalizer

Lucas Glover’s win this past weekend at the Wells Fargo Championship taught us all one thing – don’t forget about your putter!  A look at the statistics from the tournament tells an interesting tale.  Glover’s average drive was over 30 yards shorter than that of Bubba Watson, the tournament’s leading big hitter.  He hit less than half of the fairways throughout the four rounds.  Glover barely topped the tournament average for greens in regulation.  His scrambling percentage, while solid, was well short of spectacular.  In the end, Lucas Glover was carried to victory by the shortest club in his bag.  His .149 Strokes Gained average led the field for the week, and his putts per hole is now a meager 1.695, just thousandths of a stroke behind the current putting and earnings winner, Luke Donald.

Like Glover, Donald is equally unimpressive in his statistics.  He is currently 157th in driving distance on tour, putting him an average of 40 yards behind driving leader J.B. Holmes on every shot into the green.  So how do they do it?  Donald’d 41st in Greens in Regulation is what one would describe as steady, yet not blowing away the competition by any means.  Donald and Glover have been able to win for the simple reason that they know how to get the ball in the hole.  While everybody loves to see long drives and gutsy shots, being able to roll the ball well is what wins tournaments.  During his run of dominance just a few short years ago, spectators would comment on Tiger’s impressive ability to swing faster and hit the ball harder than anyone on tour.  Yet when you look at a highlight reel of his best moments, most of them occur on the green.  From his putt on the 18th at Torrey Pines to force a playoff to his winding putt on the 17th at Sawgrass, many of Tiger’s best moments have occurred on the greens, and this is something that people often forget about.

So what can we learn from this?  For one, to practice our putting.  Everybody wants to hit balls on the range for hours, but that time might be better served on a green.  Another lesson is to pay more attention to your actual putter.  If I had a dollar for every 30-year-old putter that I saw, I’d be a fairly well-off man.  For some of us who have bought a driver a year for the last decade and are still playing with our father’s flatstick, this might be the year to make the change.  When you look for a putter, don’t just settle on whichever one looks the coolest.  Put it down, take a few strokes and find one that makes you feel comfortable.  While you may feel as if leaving your old trusted stick may not be a good idea, feel free to experiment with some of the new technology that is available to consumers today.  Maybe a white putter will actually help you, or maybe making the switch to a mallet will help straighten out your stroke.  As Luke Donald and Lucas Glover can attest to, the value of a good putter is priceless.

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