Jordan Spieth's putting

I recently saw a quote from Butch Harmon that Jordan Spieth holed over 30% of his putts from 20-25ft last year when the “next guy is about 8%”. Given that Jordan is short off the tee, one wonders about the implication if his putting were to decline to merely outstanding.

Jordan's success rate from 20-25 ft (Harmon's chosen stat from the myriad available) was actually 26% over the 2015 PGA tour (http://progolfnow.com/2015/12/16/top-stats-on-pga-tour-in-2015/). I couldn't confirm whether "the next guy" was really at 8%, which I rather doubt, but the top 3 for overall average number of putts per green in 2015 were: Spieth (1.699), Day (1.712) and, surprisingly in view of my earlier post, Dustin Johnson (1.715).

So far this season, Spieth's success rate from 20-25ft putts is 5.4% and he is tied 176th at that stat. Rory McIlroy is 157th at 7.7%, Dustin Johnson 41st at 16.1% and Jason Day 1st at 26.7% - ominously like Spieth's figure last year. (See USPGA website).

To be fair, these stats are on small numbers of successes at this early stage of the year; Day 4 from 15, Spieth 1 from 17. And if you go to putts from 15 - 20 ft, McIlroy is 1st with 40% and Spieth is well up there at 27th with 26%. And on putts per round this year, Spieth is 2nd (27.31), Day 6th (28.06) and Dustin Johnson 22nd (28.39).

But Butch's point holds: difficult to see how Spieth can keep winning if his putting isn't really hot, especially with so many top players appearing to be in good nick.

We'll see over the next few days.