Luke Donald (not Joe Ogilvie) is the best putter in the PGA
Luke Donald. Source: PGA
The Wall Street Journal (A Stat Is Born: Golf’s New Way to Measure Putting | Putting Rankings) recently profiled a fascinating new putting methodology co-developed by the PGA and MIT Sloan School of Management (see HOW TO CATCH A TIGER: UNDERSTANDING PUTTING PERFORMANCE ON THE PGA TOUR).
MIT has developed a mathematical performance model that takes into account the limitations of traditional putting metrics (ie. Putts per Round, Putts per GIR). Essentially, it controls for factors that bias putting performance. For example, approach shot wizards like Steve Stricker (#1 Putting Average) would naturally score higher in putts per round because they simply had more shorter putts to sink. In addition, not all greens are created equal, but the old method treated them as such:
Through a working agreement with the PGA TOUR, we have obtained access to proprietary “ShotLink” data that pinpoints the location of every shot taken on the PGA TOUR. Using these data, we develop distance-based models for two components of putting performance: the probability of making the putt and the remaining distance to the pin conditioned on missing.
The MIT paper further describes using “logistic regression”, “gamma regression”, and “Markov chain.” Since I’m no Norman Einstein, I will have to take these researchers for their word. When all the statistical dust settles, the new measure is called “putts gained per round relative to the field.” The WSJ puts it into English:
This metric, which evaluates each putt a pro makes based on distance and compares the result to the expected average of pros hitting putts of the same length, eliminates biases that distort other statistical putting measures and better identifies pure putting skill.
The PGA plans to publish these new statistics as well as previously unpublished numbers such as percentage of putts made by distance (ie, 5 footers holed) next month.
Puttistry has been publishing its own putter rankings using the available data on the PGA website. Unlike the advanced MIT model, Puttistry has used a simple weighted average of (1) Putts Per Round (2) Putts Per GIR (3) Birdie Conversions.
For fun, here is a 2009 comparison of the new MIT putts gained per round score versus the Puttistry weighted average. There are some surprising similarities and differences, but at the end of the day, I’ll go ahead and defer to the quant geeks in Cambridge:
| Rank | Player | Putter | Puttistry Rank |
| 1 | Luke Donald | Bettinardi BB1 | 6 |
| 2 | Tiger Woods | Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Stainless Newport 2 TW Prototype | 7 |
| 3 | Ben Curtis | Titleist Scotty Cameron Newport 2 SS | 131 |
| 4 | Bryce Molder | Titleist Scotty Cameron Newport | 89 |
| 5 | Brad Faxon | Titleist Scotty Cameron Prototype | 41 |
| 6 | Jim Furyk | Odyssey White Hot XG #7 | 25 |
| 7 | Brandt Snedeker | Odyssey White Hot XG Rossie | 47 |
| 8 | Brian Gay | Mizuno Bettinardi Prototype | 19 |
| 9 | Matt Kuchar | Rife Barbados | 17 |
| 10 | Aaron Baddeley | Titleist Scotty Cameron Newport | 11 |
| Rank | Player | Putter | MIT Rank |
| 1 | Joe Ogilvie | TaylorMade Rossa Lemans | 15 |
| 2 | Daniel Chopra | Ping Anser 2 w/tungsten heel-toe weighting | 61 |
| 3 | Anthony Kim | Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Style “button back” Newport prototype | 63 |
| 4 | Steve Stricker | Odyssey White Hot #2 | 69 |
| 5 | Jason Day | TaylorMade Rossa Suzuka | 18 |
| 6 | Luke Donald | Bettinardi BB1 | 1 |
| 7 | Tiger Woods | Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Stainless Newport 2 TW Prototype | 2 |
| 8 | Greg Chalmers | Unknown | 11 |
| 9 | Charlie Wi | Unknown | 23 |
| 10 | Kevin Na | Titleist Scotty Cameron Newport | 21 |
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