As a matter of interest, how well did Weekley putt when he won his tournaments ?
Niall
Niall,
It's a great question, and I dug out Broadie's book and searched the internet briefly and so far haven't been able to find the SG stats for Weekly's wins. What DOES show up is that Weekley is a) a great ball striker, and b) a consistently poor putter, at least by Tour standards, almost always ranking at or near the very bottom of the Tour putting stats.
It's worth noting that two of Weekley's three Tour wins were in the period covered in Broadie's book (2004-2012) and I can't find Weekley's name anywhere, even though Broadie has a section labeled "Winning In Spite of Putting". The poster child for this, btw, is Vijay Singh.
In Broadie's research, covering 315 Tour events, the winner putted worse than the field 14 times, or 4% of the time, with Singh alone accounting for 5 of the 14. However (and IMO this is the important part) winning with off-the-green performances that were worse than the field was much rarer; it happened only twice, which is .06%, and both were limited field events with only either 30 or 31 golfers. Broadie also mentions Bubba Watson, Sean O'Hair, and Sergio Garcia, along with Singh, as players who won with relatively poor putting performances; that he does NOT mention Weekley might suggest that in the weeks that he won, Weekley wasn't especially bad as a putter.
Here are two quotes from this section of Broadie's book that sort of sum things up, I think. Both statements are data-driven, and NOT statements of opinion.
"Tournament winners play better than the best golfers in the world when they win. They usually do most everything well in those weeks. They putt better, drive better, hit more accurate approaches, and get up and down more often compared to the field."
"The numbers show that it's possible to win with below-average putting, but victories almost never happen with below-average ball striking."