Like a lot of golf fans, I took in quite a bit of golf this weekend. What was shaping up to be a tight finish with a group of golfers, including the Big Five, within a few shots of the lead turned out to be a leisurely walk for Phil up the 18th.
This week in The Numbers Game, I’ll break down a few of the stats and numbers from this year’s Masters and throw out a few extra numbers for you to chew on.
Phil Wins by Default
Well, it probably isn’t fair to say that he won by default. Phil won because he didn’t make any mistakes on Sunday. Where others failed to manage the fairways and greens at Augusta, Phil did just that.
Here were his stats for the week (out of the 47 that made the cut):
Greens in Regulation (GIR) 4th Driving Accuracy (DA) 36th Driving Distance (DD) 1st Putts (P) 16th
Phil was long off the tee and hit a lot of greens. Putting pretty well also helped. As most of us saw this weekend, the rough at Augusta isn’t very penalizing, so missing a few fairways didn’t hurt him. I don’t really remember seeing Phil in much trouble off the tee… especially on Sunday. When he did miss, Mickelson did it in the right spots.
Tiger’s Woes
Everyone knows why Tiger didn’t make his charge on Sunday. There was only one reason: the flatstick.
Round Putts Thursday 29 Friday 28 Saturday 27 Sunday 33
I couldn’t find putting stats for his previous Masters rounds but I’d be willing to bet that the 33 he had on Sunday was easily his worst. Heck, it might be the worst in any professional round in a long time. The three three-putts on Sunday killed him but at least Darren Clarke out-stunk him by three jacking four times. Only Brandt Jobe, Adam Scott, and Olin Brown three-putted more times than Tiger. Ugly.
Here’s one other thing to chew on about Tiger. It was the first time since 1999 he didn’t have a round in the 60s at Augusta. You could feel the frustration Tiger had out there on Sunday… Shooting a 70 with 33 putts. It might be ugly, but at least Tiger can chalk it up to one problem. The bigger problem is for the rest of the Tour if he continues to hit the ball like he did on Sunday.
Freddy
Besides Tiger, he had more eyes on him on Sunday than anyone else. Another thing he had in common with Woods was his lousy putting. It seemed contagious.
Couples bettered Tiger by one putt with 34 on Sunday. It really wasn’t much better the rest of the week:
Round Putts Thursday 33 Friday 27 Saturday 31 Sunday 34
Friday was pretty good, but Freddy was the 4th worst putter of those making the cut in Augusta. Similar to Tiger, Couples had a great day striking the ball. He stayed out of trouble all day… other than the 13th, which he birdied. Couples hit 16 out of 18 greens and on those two greens he missed he was putting from the fringe. Freddy threw away very makeable putts, killing himself on the greens at Augusta National.
Going Low?
The other interesting thing I took away from the 2006 edition of The Masters was the fact that not one golfer had two rounds in the 60s. I thought it might have happened before but since 1990, only 1999 and 1994 were close with only one person shooting in the 60s twice.
For a bit of further research, here are the number of sub-70 rounds since 1990:
Year Rounds 2006 15 2005 24 2004 21 2003 13 2002 15 2001 32 2000 23 1999 20 1998 17 1997 24 1996 21 1995 37 1994 12 1993 31 1992 44 1991 42 1990 23
2006 was the second lowest year ever with only 15 rounds under 70. I’ll be curious to see what happens next year. I doubt that we’ll ever see the above number in the upper 20s or 30s any time soon. What I do know is that I’ll be back here checking up on all of the numbers.