Who is the best putter on the PGA Tour?
PGA Tour

Who is the best putter on the PGA Tour?

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Move over, Woodstock. There's a new festival of love, peace and harmony taking place at Conway Farms. (And it's not that awful Woodstock 2, either.)

Steve Stricker and Brandt Snedeker, two of the best putters on the PGA Tour, played together in the first round of the BMW Championship. Combined, they were 13 under par on the day, with Snedeker shooting 8-under 63 to take the lead and Stricker no slouch with 66. Together, they gained 6.4 strokes on the field with all of the putts they were making.

Afterward, Stricker said Snedeker was the best putter he had ever seen. There's not much of a better compliment considering how many people believe that title belongs to Stricker. Luke Donald is certainly in the conversation, too, but these days, it boils down to the American S-men.

So who is the best putter on the PGA Tour?

Let's turn to the PGA Tour's best putting stat, strokes gained putting, to settle the argument -- and tell Steve Stricker if his eyes have been deceiving him.

We looked at the last four years of putting on the PGA Tour, keeping only the players that were inside the top 50 in strokes gained for all four years. Then we ran into a problem immediately: Steve Stricker wasn't in the top 50 in strokes gained putting in 2012. We included him anyhow for comparison purposes.

To get to the answer of who is the best putter on the PGA Tour, we added all of the strokes gained putting and divided them by all of the measured rounds to get an average of strokes gained per round in the last four years.

Here's our list:

Player Total SGP Total Rounds Avg. SGP
Luke Donald 152.753 191 0.800
Brandt Snedeker 165.226 257 0.643
Bryce Molder 174.153 282 0.618
Brian Gay 181.993 301 0.605
Greg Chalmers 214.671 389 0.552
Aaron Baddeley 138.187 264 0.523
Zach Johnson 140.777 272 0.518
Matt Kuchar 140.521 273 0.515
Steve Stricker 89.608 190 0.472

So congratulations to Luke Donald -- you're actually the best putter on the PGA Tour for the last four years.

Brandt Snedeker, you're second. And Steve Stricker, you're ninth.

About the author

Ryan Ballengee

Ryan Ballengee is founder and editor of Golf News Net. He has been writing and broadcasting about golf for nearly 20 years. Ballengee lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his family. He is a scratch golfer...sometimes.

Ballengee can be reached by email at ryan[at]thegolfnewsnet.com

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