Dufner does the math in determining success rate
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.: Jason Dufner scanned down both sides of the crowded practice range Tuesday at Sea
So many players, even if he Mark O’Meara in mind. doesn’t know all their names. Couples won 2.4 percent of And so few trophies. his career starts on the PGA Tour, It was another reminder to along with the 1992 Masters. He Dufner that golf has a failure rate was inducted into the Hall of Fame unlike most other sports.
The PGA Tour had 648 players tee it up in at least one tournament last year, and only 37 players went home with a trophy. Consider the winners-only start to the calendar year at Kapalua. From the 34-man
not made it back.
It doesn’t take an economics
that winning isn’t easy.
Dufner, who has such a degree, came up with his own version of success on the PGA Tour that at
“You win 2 percent of your tournaments, you probably have a Hall of Fame career,” Dufner said. “You throw in a major and win 2 percent of your tournaments, and you’re certainly in the Hall of Fame.”
Maybe he had Fred Couples or percent of his PGA Tour events, plus two majors in 1998. He was inducted two years later. Another example is Davis Love III, who has won 2.6 percent of his tournaments with one major and was inducted last year.
Hall of Fame standards are hard to determine now because a 16-person panel of mostly golf administrators talk among themselves before voting who should
it once was, nor should it be with a talent pool that is getting deeper with every year.
It’s getting harder to win. That didn’t stop nine players from winning at least twice last
Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Justin each won three times — but in Dufner’s eyes, those are either exceptional players or exceptional years, sometimes both.
Dufner won twice in one season in 2012, the year before he won the PGA Championship. He now
equates to winning 1.6 percent of his PGA Tour starts with one major. So the Hall of Fame is not in the picture.
“I better get going,” Dufner said with a laugh.
One measure of difficulty is who didn’t win this year, a list that includes Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama and Henrik Stenson, who all started the year among the top 10 players in the world.
Another measure is who ended long droughts.
The most famous is Tiger Woods, an exception in many cases. His victory at the Tour Championship was his first since 2013, and it followed four surgeries on his back. Phil Mickelson in Mexico City won for the first time since 2013. Matt Kuchar won last week at Former U.S. Open champion at The Players Championship for
The key ingredient in Dufner’s model, of course, is playing long enough so that winning 2 percent of tournaments actually means something. And those who last that long usually build up scar tissue from all the times they failed to win. Losing happens a lot. Justin Rose and Johnson are among those who have made winning a habit. Johnson has won every calendar year since 2008 on the Henderson of Canada, one of the five women who would clinch the Globe automatically with a win this week. “I think that was a good motivation for a lot of players to win a lot of PGA Tour except for 2014. Rose has won every year since 2010 except for 2016, though he won Olympic gold in Rio de Janiero that summer.
“Winning every year is extremely tough to do,” Dufner said. “It’s just
Dufner has a model for that, too. “You have to have a 95 percentplus success rate to win,” he said.
hole basis in a negative sense. It’s more about what a player doesn’t do wrong as opposed to what he did right. Last week in Mayakoba,
Matt Kuchar of the United States celebrates with wife Sybi and sons Cameron and Carson on the 18th green after winning the final round of the Mayakoba Golf Classic at El Camaleon Mayakoba Golf Course on November 11, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. SYDNEY: Matt Kuchar said he was still on a high after his first PGA Tour win in four years and expected to be in the hunt again after making a mad dash to play in this week’s Australian Open.
The 40-year- old American jetted into Sydney from Mexico on Wednesday morning after winning the Mayakoba Classic in Playa del Carmen, which pushed him up to 29 in the world, two behind Phil Mickelson.
Kuchar is the highest-ranked player at The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney after the event failed to attract any top-10 golfers because of a clash with the European Tour’s US$8 million season-ending event in Dubai.
Fellow Americans Keegan Bradley and Brandt Snedeker are among Kuchar’s key threats, and they are all keen to add their name to the Stonehaven Cup alongside the likes of former champions Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Greg Norman, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus.
“I’m certainly on a big high. Winning definitely provides an amazing high,” said Kuchar, who went straight from the airport to the course after missing a connection in Los Angeles.
“I feel like I’ve developed a swing that I can count on. I hope to play well, expect to play well, but don’t feel any extra pressure to play well.”
Along with the American contingent, Australian young gun Cameron Davis, who shot a brilliant final-round 64 to win last year, is back to defend his title.
But there are no top-name Australians with Jason Day opting out after his and three- putted three times. That’s not success. Dufner shot
shots behind Kuchar.
“I probably had 15 or 20 shots that were not successful,” he said, estimating his success rate at 90 percent.
For the 309th time in 314 starts on the PGA Tour, he failed to win.
Then again, Dufner went over $26 million in career earnings.
Failure is relative. wife recently gave birth and Adam Scott and Marc Leishman also missing.
Snedeker, a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour, returns after more than a decade and has unfinished business.
“Craig Parry won in 2007. I remember I lost by a shot. Had to call a penalty on myself on Sunday and it cost me the tournament,” he recalled of his near miss 11 years ago.
Snedeker made a playoff at the Safeway Open in Napa recently and has found some decent form after a few difficult years.
“I feel like I’ve really done a lot of hard work and made a lot of tough decisions to get myself back to being a top-10 player in the world, being where I feel I belong and win golf tournaments,” he said.
Bradley, who won the 2011 PGA Championship, is playing his first Australian Open. He grew up watching the event on television and said it has always been on his bucket list.
“It’s easy for us to just stick to the PGA Tour. And I’ve always wanted to come down here and sometimes the schedule doesn’t permit that,” he said.
“But this year I had a little opening at the end of the year and I really wanted to make it happen.”
And Bradley, who won the BMW Championships this year, believes he is playing well enough to win at the par-72 course.
“As long as I go out there and putt the way I’ve been putting, I’m playing well enough to contend,” he said.