One out of one. Scottie Scheffler has played a single tournament with his new Olson putter, a semi-unknown brand, and he has won it. It was the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas last December, a month ago. Of course, as a test bench it was exceptional, although the numbers were not impressive either. After all, he finished sixth out of twenty in the putt statistic in the Tiger Woods tournament.
The reality is that Albany, the course in the Bahamas, is a design especially thought for the second shots, the house speciality, and it was again his long game that supported and propelled him during the week. However, in just three days he faces a trial by fire to better calibrate his evolution, not only with the new tool, which is almost the least of it, but with the work he has been doing since shortly before the Ryder Cup with Phil Kenyon, one of the main gurus of golf on the greens.
The trial by fire is called Kapalua Resort, the par 73 where the first tournament of the year has been held since 1999 on the PGA Tour. Historically, the five main statistics that need to be dominated to win the The Sentry are the average of birdies, where Scheffler finished among the top five last year, the shots to green, where he was by far the best in 2023, the proximity to the flag from 50-125 yards, an area in which he finished fifth, the average of strokes on the par 5s, where he was fourth and the strokes gained with the putter, where he finished 162nd.
The numbers make it very clear that you have to putt very well on the Bermuda greens of Hawaii to win the tournament. You don’t need to be the best if you compensate with other areas, but you certainly need to be among the best. The reason for this demand is precisely in its greens. They are gigantic. The largest of the year on the PGA Tour, with an average of almost 150 square meters per green. Yes, you have to be precise with the second shot, but inevitably, sooner or later, you are leaving long putts that need to be resolved. It is one of the courses with the worst average of greens to a putt of the year.
There is a particularly devastating statistic. The last four winners of the Sentry (Rahm, Smith, English and Reed) were the best putters that week. The best thing Scheffler has done in all of 2023 in the putt statistic in a tournament was to finish thirteenth in Phoenix. In Hawaii, in the two editions he has played, he has been seventh and thirteenth, finishing in the putt statistic in the twelfth and fourteenth places.
If there is someone who has shown that he can win golf tournaments putting ‘almost’ like an amateur, that is Scheffler. However, the challenge in Kapalua is cubed by the characteristics and physiognomy of the course and especially of its greens. If Scottie wants to win without inventing a new Hawaiian way, he will have to putt better than ever and there we will be able to check the real evolution of his work with Phil Kenyon and his new Olson putter. It will be interesting.
By the way, in two of the five key statistics to win at the Sentry, the best in 2023 on the PGA Tour was Ludvig Aberg (more birdies per round and average on par 5s). Yes, the Swede.
