Tiger: Something needs to be done about golf ball

Welcome to this week’s Stats Insider, where we’ll take a closer look at Marc Leishman’s win at the Farmers Insurance Open. Leishman moved to seventh in the FedExCup with his fifth career victory. 1. PRIME TIME: Golfers traditionally hit their prime in their 30s, and that’s definitely the case for the 36-year-old Leishman. The 2009 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year had one win in his first 206 starts. He has four in his last 70, a span that started with his win in the 2017 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Only five players have more wins on TOUR since 2017: Justin Thomas (11), Dustin Johnson (8), Brooks Koepka (6), Rory McIlroy (5) and Bryson DeChambeau (5). RELATED: Leishman finally tames Torrey Pines | Winner’s Bag 2. STRONG FINISH: Leishman started the final round in seventh place, four shots behind 54-hole leader Jon Rahm. Leishman got off to a hot start, making seven birdies in the first 13 holes. He birdied the first two and made the turn in 31 before adding birdies on 11 and 13. He made his only bogey on 17 but came back with a final-hole birdie that proved to be the difference. Leishman’s Sunday 65 matched the lowest final-round score by a winner at Torrey Pines since the course was renovated in 2001 to make it tougher for the 2008 U.S. Open. Rahm (2017) and Jose Maria Olazabal (2002) also shot that score in the final round of their wins. Rahm finished second to Leishman on Sunday. Leishman’s round also was three strokes lower than anyone else who started the final round in the top 10. 3. PUTTING PROWESS: Leishman led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting by more than two strokes. He gained +8.0 strokes on the greens in the three measured rounds (there is no ShotLink on Torrey Pines’ North Course). Rahm was second in Strokes Gained: Putting at +5.9. Leishman holed 10 putts from outside 10 feet in the three ShotLink-measured rounds. He was 7 for 10 (70%) from 10-20 feet. This was just the second time in his career that he led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. He also did it in his runner-up finish at the 2018 AT&T Byron Nelson. Leishman gained more than half those strokes in the final round. He gained +4.8 strokes on the greens in the final round after making every putt he faced from 10-20 feet. He was 3 for 3 from 10-15 feet in the final round and also made his lone attempt from 15-20 feet. 4. NARROW ROAD: Leishman hit just three fairways in the final round. That ties the fewest recorded in the final round by a winner in the last 30 years. It’s been done five times in that span. Three of the five players on the list – Leishman, Geoff Ogilvy and Steve Elkington – are Australian. Leishman hit less than half his fairways for the week (27 of 56) to rank T58 in driving accuracy. Torrey Pines traditionally has some of the hardest fairways to hit, though. The field hit 54% of the fairways in this year’s Farmers Insurance Open, making Torrey Pines’ fairways the fourth-hardest to hit this season. They were the hardest to hit in each of the previous two seasons.  5. ROUGH STUFF: Because everyone is missing fairways at Torrey Pines, the ability to hit quality approach shots from the rough is a key skill. That’s why players like Jason Day and Tiger Woods have excelled at Torrey Pines. Having a good short game can help, as well. That’s another strength of Woods, Day and another multiple-time winner at Torrey Pines, Brandt Snedeker. Leishman finished fifth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green at Torrey Pines (+4.7 strokes), 14th in greens hit (52 of 72) and fourth in scrambling (75%, 15 for 20). He missed the fairway 23 times on a par-4 last week but was 2 under par on those holes. He missed 18 fairways on par-4s on the South Course, but played those 18 holes in even par.  There were 34 players who missed at least 20 fairways on par-4s at Torrey Pines. Only two of those players were under par on the par-4s where they missed the fairway: Leishman and Zack Sucher. Both were 2 under par.

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