I was watching the Wyndham Championship this weekend and they interview Scott McCarron. In the interview they asked what he was working on in terms of putting. Scott mentioned he has been using the Aimpoint System to help him with reading the greens. Being curious I googled aimpoint and found www.aimpointgolf.com. Discovered a page called “How Much Is One Putt Per Event Worth”?

Here they calculate how much more money each PGA Tour player would have won if they made just one less putt in the last 36 holes. They show the money lost from 2005-2009. I know we all feel like we could have sunk one or more putts each round, not a measly one putt over 2 rounds. It blew me away when you consider how much more money the top players in the world left on the table by missing one putt after making the cut.

Who left the most money on the putting green over the span of five seasons surprised me. From 2005-2009 Jim Furyk could have made an additional $12,026,823. Now how significant is that amount. Going to PGAtour.com their stats on money earned goes back to 2006. Here are Furyks results:

Jim Furyk could have made 70% more in the 2008 season if he would have made one more putt for each weekend he made the cut, and he made 23 cuts out of 26 events. In 2008 Furyk had 9 top 10’s, 2 of those were 3rd place finishes, one 2nd place finish, and no wins.

If we look at who left the most money on the green, we unfortuately see Furyk was the overall leader during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Here are the leaders overall season leaders: 2005 - Singh 3.1M, 2006 - Furyk 2.26M, 2007 - Furyk 2.9M, 2008 - Garcia 2.45M, and 2009 - Woods 2.52M.

Looking at the leaders of each season it seems the players who are in contention the most are the ones who have lost out on the most money. This makes sense because missing a putt while in contention will cost more than missing a putt while tied for 50th. In three seasons Tiger Woods has missed on an addition 2M, Furyk has surpassed the2M mark in all 5 seasons, Garcia surpassed 2M twice and Vijay once.

What surprised me was Phil Michelson total. With the amount he contends I thought his totals would have been higher. He did not have one season from 2005-2009 where he missed earning more than 2M. In fact the most he missed out earning was 1.6 million in 2008.

This stat has no correlation to how well or poorly they putted that season. Jim Furyk putting average in 2007 was ranked 66th and in 2006 was ranked 6th. Tiger was ranked 23rd in 2009. Sergio Garcia was ranked 107th.

One problem I see with this stat is we have to assume that only you make one more putt and nobody else. If all players made one more putt on the weekend the changes would not be significant at all. I believe there would be a few changed based on which day you make the extra putt giving more weight to putts made on Sunday.

I was curious to visit this page and and blown away at the amount of money PGA players could have won if they would have sank one more putt on the weekend. I could only imagine how sinking one more putt can affect the average weekend warrior. If you were able to sink just one more putt how would if affect your score? Or better yet if you could sink one more putt how would that affect your confidence?