Steve Stricker is the best putter in the world at the moment – by a mile

steve-stricker-putt

Who do you think is the best putter in the world? Jordan Spieth? Brandt Snedeker? Aaron Baddeley? Jason Day? 

Not even close. 

The above names are all fantastic with the flat blade, but they’re not a patch on Steve Stricker. 

It pays to be careful when looking at golf statistics, as they can easily be misinterpreted. Some people would assume that the simplest way to determine who is the best putter would simply be to look at who has taken the fewest putts. However, that would fail to take into account the difficulty of putts faced by each player. Think of your own game, for example. If you miss every green during your round, you will be hitting a relatively short chip or pitch onto the green, likely leaving yourself a shorter putt than you would have faced had you hit the green in regulation with your second shot, played from much further down the hole. 

Fortunately, the PGA Tour’s ‘strokes gained putting’ statistic takes this into account, calculating the player’s proficiency from various distances compared to the rest of the field. This enables us to compare apples with apples, rather than comparing apples with oranges that are twice as far away. We can therefore state, with a good amount of certainty, that Steve Stricker is the best putter in the world at the moment. 

In 2016, Steve Stricker is absolutely dominating the strokes gained putting statistic. Across his 20 rounds so far, Stricker has gained an average of 1.273 shots per round putting, adding up to over five shots per tournament. 

Compare that to leader of the strokes gained putting statistic in 2015, Aaron Baddeley. Baddeley picked up an average of 0.717 shots per round on the field, meaning he was gaining just under three shots during the course of a four-day tournament. Still impressive, but a long way from Stricker’s performance thus far this year. 

If Stricker keeps up his sensational putting performance, can the 49-year-old add to his 12 PGA Tour titles? 

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