The Secret to Dustin Johnson’s Recent Success

Is Dustin Johnson a terrible putter?

That was the assumption and almost considered fact by PGA Tour announcers, players and recreational golfers across the globe.

So, is he?  Instead of putting trust in opinion and rumor we prefer to put our trust in what the data says.  We call it being #DataCratic.

Today, our resident PGA Tour stats expert uses his proprietary statistical analysis system (this system picked both Danny Willet to win the Masters and Dustin Johnson to win the 2016 US Open) to analyze what is really going on with Dustin Johnson, why he struggled and how he can become one of the best players of all-time.

The Truth About DJ’s Putting

Golf fans have always stereotyped players into specific molds – Seve as the escape artist or Watson as the wind tamer for instance – and they are labeled as such for their entire careers. I personally have always been curious if these stereotypes truly hold water.

My favorite modern example is definitely Dustin Johnson and his three round putter. Announcers all across the golf world have continually referenced his failures – especially those in Major Championships – and very rarely do they give his flatstick any credit.

Now, I watch a lot of golf and I always suspected that Johnson was not as bad on the greens as he’s made out to be. Of course, I also watched the four putt on the 5th at Augusta in the final round this year and the meltdown on the notorious 18th at Chambers Bay last June.

Tired of speculating, I set out to mine the data and get to the real truth.

The Data

Over the past month, I combed over Johnson’s statistics to find one answer – does he actually struggle on the greens? The conclusion I came to was shocking, largely because it goes against what golf announcers (and myself) have said about Johnson since he burst onto the scene in 2009.

It turns out Johnson is actually not nearly as oafish on the greens as he is made out to be. In fact, his 38th on Tour in Strokes Gained Putting (the all telling putting statistic developed by Columbia’s Mark Broadie) is better than a number of prominent Tour Winners.

Not only is Dustin Johnson’s Strokes Gained Putting rank well above the Tour average for this season, he’s ranked 38th in the world, and has shown significant improvement in that area each year dating back to 2013 when he ranked 120th.

If Not the Putter, Then What?

When I realized that it was not Johnson’s putter that was causing his woes, especially his major championship ones, I set out to solve the mystery of why he had failed to perform at the same elite levels as Spieth, Day, and McIlroy.

Eventually, I found a trend that helps to explain why Johnson failed to close in the past. The same data reveals a change in Johnson’s game that’s led to greater consistency (he currently owns the PGA Tour’s longest made cut streak at 22, and is on pace to set career bests for a single season in Top 25, Top 10 and Top 5 finishes).

So convincing was my research that I went to the boss here at MyGolfSpy and emphatically stated “I believe Dustin Johnson is going to win the U.S. Open at Oakmont.” Obviously anyone can claim to have made an accurate prediction after the final putt is holed, but fortunately for my credibility he believed in me enough to post my prediction to Twitter.

Our new PGA Tour Stats guy is looking over @DJohnsonPGA's stats. Based on the trend line, he's predicting a #USOpen Victory. Is he right?

— MyGolfSpy (@MyGolfSpy) June 16, 2016

I certainly wasn’t alone in picking the big hitting Carolinian to hoist the U.S. Open trophy on Father’s Day, but at MyGolfSpy we like to have data to back up any claims we make.

The figure below shows Johnson’s tee shot dispersion for each of his first nine years on the PGA Tour.

As you can see, over the past four years, his percentage of shots missed in the left-hand rough has steadily declined while his percentage of shots in the right rough is currently the highest it has ever been: 19.48%.

Ball-striking great Ben Hogan always preached about eliminating one side of the golf course, and the data suggests Johnson and his coach Butch Harmon have worked to emulate those same fundamentals. By missing more consistently in one direction, Johnson can effectively stand-up to each tee shot and be more confident that his ball is not going to go in the wrong direction – the dreaded double cross.

Right is Right

Why does he want to stay right? Johnson is significantly more successful getting the ball closer to the hole from the right rough. From 2014 to now, Johnson’s proximity to the hole from the right rough has gone from 48th on Tour to 3rd on Tour.

From the other side of the fairway, Johnson has hovered around 50th on the PGA Tour in Proximity to the Hole since his rookie season.

How about a recent example… check out where Johnson’s bogeys came from in this year’s U.S. Open:

Putting it all Together

While Johnson was impressive in this year’s U.S. Open, statistically the week was not even his best putting performance in a major. People forget that today’s greats – the Spieths, Days, and Mcilroys – all went through their own growing pains in major championships before finally claiming their maiden win. Johnson has been working to eliminate a side of the golf course, finding that he hits more fairways by doing so. Johnson is hitting the ball consistently closer to the hole from the right hand rough, and because he has all but eliminated the left side, his approaches when he does miss the fairway end up as better looks for birdies.

The better looks for birdies culminate in Johnson currently being ranked second in Birdie Average and first in Scoring Average on Tour.

The misconception regarding Johnson’s putting is only accepted as truth because the “experts” repeatedly bash it. In actuality Johnson won at Oakmont and Firestone because he is hitting it better of the tee (averaged 341 yards of the tee at the WGC) and then his approaches- whether from the fairway or rough- are finishing closer to the hole than those of his peers.