Jaeger Bombs in Houston

Playing winning golf is hard. In this series, I'll use the Tangent app to go through players performance on tour and draw insights on what us mere mortals can learn.

Just when the golfing world is ready to crown Scottie as king of the mountain, Stephan Jaeger had to come break up the celebration with some clutch golf. I was only casually following the golf during Easter festivities with the family, but it seemed every time I turned up the audio I heard the announcers talk about how perfect everyone had to be to take down a behemoth like Scottie Scheffler.

However, it played out a little different. It didn’t take other worldly golf. It just took really solid golf for Jaeger to breakthrough and get his first win on the PGA Tour. There are a lot of great lessons in this last weekend on the PGA Tour for us mere mortals. For starters, it doesn’t take perfect golf to win or to play your best. Rarely does anyone ever have all four cylinders pumping and when you think about holding off Scottie with his current form… You don’t typically think 9 straight pars on the back 9 is going to get it done… until it does.

Above is the scorecard from Jaeger’s last 9 holes in the Tangent Golf app. Notice there is nothing magical. Not a circle to be found. Just 7 of 9 greens and 4 of 7 fairways. Now don’t get me confused, Jaeger played excellent golf for the week. In fact, he gained almost a full stroke or more on the average PGA Tour player in all four categories:

Thats amazing stuff, but he finished outside the top 30 in strokes gained driving and approach for the week. He made up for it from closer to the green. He finished 9th in Strokes Gained for Short Game. He had the 3rd best strokes gained putting performance of the week, making all his short ones and only having a single 3 putt all week (red in the plot below) from very long range. He made 16 of 36 attempts between 6 and 20 feet… Jaeger Bombs indeed.

Stephan made it relatively easy on himself in that when he missed greens, he scrambled really well to save a ton of pars. In fact, he scrambled over 72% of the time with an average proximity inside 10’ from lies other than the rough. Being able to pitch it that close when you miss a green takes a tremendous amount of stress off your long game. Allowing you to not be perfect on approach.

Typically, as you get later in a tournament, any weakness starts to reveal itself. You’ll see many pretenders have great stats in early rounds and then struggle with ball striking as it gets closer to check cashing time. Jaeger on the other hand, hit more greens on the weekend than he did in the first two days. Lighter winds may have helped.

With that being said, as amateurs we often think the pros are perfect with wedges. Tracking Jaeger’s shots, he missed three greens from inside 120 yards on Sunday and still WON THE TOURNAMENT. Stop beating yourself up with unreasonable expectations. Lean on your strengths and work on your weaknesses with the Tangent Golf app and you’ll be one step closer to holding your trophy. Whatever that may be for you in this crazy game that we all love.