Opinion & Analysis
Five Questions About Jimmy Walker
Jimmy Walker came out of nowhere. We can all agree on that, right?
A player who needed a majority of the 2000s to make it up to the big leagues and combined for four total top-10s between his first three years on the PGA Tour from 2008-2010 has now won FIVE TIMES in two seasons and vaulted into the world’s top 10.
Walker has indeed been a fast riser, but on every other subject about his play there seems to be more ambivalence, from his place in American golf to his chances at the big events to his future.
I look at the big questions about Walker with my own takes on each subject.
Is Walker the most promising American player?
No chance.
Walker is 36 years old and just a couple of seasons away from an age where professional golfers generally face a steep decline. Of course, that chart is an average rather than a sentence, but even if Walker continues peak performance past the age-38ish drop-off, he could maybe do so for a half-decade at most. The greatest late bloomer of this generation, Vijay Singh, only made it to 45 before his steep decline, and another age-less wonder, Phil Mickelson, jumped off his performance cliff at age 43.
Contrast that with guys like Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler who could have decades before they decline and still haven’t reached the average peak golf years for a pro. Dustin Johnson also has nearly a decade of prime years left.
Magically decrease Walker’s age by 10 years and maybe we could talk.
Fine, can we now call Walker the best American?
If the definition is the American with the most ability in the present (based off a recent but large sample of results), it’s fair to put Walker’s name in the hat but nothing more than that.
Walker’s five PGA Tour wins since the beginning of the 2013-2014 season are two more than any other American, but not all wins are created equal. Walker’s five victories have all originated against weak or average fields, which speaks to an inflated total that would significantly decrease when given a competition adjustment.
We also tend to overrate wins and treat them as the only barometer to measuring a player’s greatness. Victories only represent a player’s best few weeks, why wouldn’t we look at their full list of performances when evaluating them?
With this greater scope, we can look to top-10s (which generally represent contention) and made cuts for help. Walker does come out pretty well here with 15 top-10s in 37 events and an 89 percent made cut rate since 2013-2014.
But let’s compare to the Americans placed higher than Walker in the World Golf Rankings. Johnson has 11 top-10s in 23 events and a 78 percent cut rate, Watson marks off 12 top-10s in 26 events with an 88 percent cut rate, Spieth is 13 for 35 with an 89 percent mark and Jim Furyk is 12 for 26 with zero missed cuts.
Looking at this non-win set of performances, Walker maybe comes in third and that’s without adjusting his schedule, which has been quite a bit easier because of his appearance in former fall series events along with his avoidance of Arnold’s and Jack’s Invitationals.
If his five wins came against mostly solid fields, his bigger slate of quality victories might allow him to jump everyone here. As that is not the case, I can’t justify calling him the best American.
Is Walker an elite golfer?
Elite is a pretty arbitrary word, and I like it to mean something truly special, so when you ask me about “elite” golfers in the world, I’m thinking creme of the crop where only about the top-5 are considered.
Walker doesn’t fit under that definition, but if we use a more lenient one, maybe a top-15 or top-20 player, the American qualifies.
After all, he is currently No. 10 in the World Golf Rankings and as noted above, his record in non-victory weeks has been pretty solid and speak about a player who does well besides his wins.
Some people believe he needs to win a major to be considered “elite,” but if we are going by that stipulation, Luke Donald wasn’t “elite” when he had the best season of any player in 2011.
For the first time, I will answer in the affirmative. Jimmy Walker, under this lenient common definition, is elite.
Will he win a major?
It’s too bad Walker has so little experience in the majors (just 10 starts), because the 2015 courses are very well set up for him.
Augusta, with its favoritism toward long hitters and great putters, is a great fit for Walker, who is near the top in both categories. He doesn’t hit it as high as you would think, but Walker can still loft it up there pretty well.
As I noted before, Chambers Bay, St. Andrews and Whistling Straits all appear inviting to big hitters and great approach players. Walker is certainly the first and, as much as his putting gets the hype, his transformation from a mediocre approach player to an excellent one is the main reason behind his sudden arrival.
Walker has absolutely no control on where the ball will go off the tee, though, (he straddles 175th position in Driving Accuracy and Distance from Edge of Fairway), which could be a little detrimental at Whistling Straits.
I’d say he has a good chance this year, but golf tends to delay deserving major championship winners. If Walker’s decline starts around age 38, I don’t think he wins a major.
But if he can get about a half-dozen more cracks at Augusta in or near his prime, he will snag a Green Jacket.
Can Walker continue winning at this clip in future years?
I don’t see a massive decline in Walker’s fortunes. It’ll be difficult to keep up a victory every seven events, though.
First off, Walker’s schedule will likely toughen up a bit going forward. I’m not a psychic, but once you get to Walker’s level you tend to focus on the majors more and build your schedule with better fields to peak for those four events. You also eschew lower tier tournaments that you don’t need to play anymore (i.e. the former Fall Series events), because you can get enough starts in the bigger events.
Secondly, Walker’s one win per every three top-10s is a pretty unsustainable rate. Mickelson, despite his reputation, is one of the greater closers in the history of golf and his career rate is 1 win per every 4.13 top-10s. Woods’ is 1 per every 2.34, but that is for the greatest closer of all time.
Walker has done a great job on Sundays, but unless we expect him to become one of the greatest closers of all time, this ratio will plummet fast.
In the next couple of years, Walker will add to his win total at a slower rate. After that, aging might get the better of him, but we’ll see.
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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Seemingly Mundane
Apr 7, 2015 at 12:54 am
So yes the article feels a bit like a hit piece. I would suggest you have a peer proof read your work first before posting since you say that it was not intended as such.
So Walker is 36, right now, this season (since 2004 doesn’t matter to the author by his own admission) Walker is still playing lights out and leading the FedEx Cup and that is all that matters. Since when is ball trajectory a marker of a great player?? Very strange. The first player that comes to mind for me with a lower ball flight is Sergio. Stats must mean next to nothing obviously as Walker continues to buck the stat trend…..
What grates on me more is how many times he uses “like” in his replies here, holy cow,
MASSIVE MIKE!
Apr 6, 2015 at 12:25 am
jimmy who? Oh yes, I’ve had some of the best naps of my life when walker is playing because he’s so boring!
MASSIVE MIKE!
Apr 6, 2015 at 12:21 am
Useless dribble!
Nick
Apr 5, 2015 at 10:16 pm
I’ll just leave this here for anyone interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Levi
NoThanksKev
Apr 5, 2015 at 11:27 am
My favorite part of this article is how the author analyses “the quality” of Walker’s victories in depth, but fails to provide his readers the same detailed information when discussing the Top 10 finishes and made cuts statistics of Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Jordan Spieth, and Jim Furyk. What did the field quality look like where these #’s were pulled from? While Jim Furyk consistently posts great #’s in these two categories, why do we ignore the fact that he did so while blowing multiple 54 hole leads and failing to close? I highly doubt that Furyk left these events feeling satisfied posting a Top 10 or even Top 5 finish. Having said that, I would also say that Jim Furyk has had an amazing career & he deserbes nothing but respect from his fans & critics alike. Has anyone ever asked a Tournament sponsor to remove their name from the trophy because they weren’t satisfied with the overall quality of the Tournament Field? I didn’t think so.
We then receive another gem concerning Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler who are apparently dominating the Tour and have more than a decade to continue to do so. In reality, Spieth, Koepka, and Fowler combine for 4 Official Tour victories. With 4 victories to his credit, Patrick Reed certainly has proven his Elite status amongst his peers, but is still 1 victory short of Jimmy Walkers tally. While I would say all of these players are great and display even greater signs of promise, until they post more W’s than Jimmy, I cannot put them on his level. If golf were measured by potential alone, Tiger would have passed Jack by now, and we all know that this is not the case.
I don’t know why this article was written, nor have I yet been able to find an overall theme, but I do know that Jimmy Walker deserves credit for his amazing run, an attempt to criticize his victories is fruitless, and that there is no statistical category that will ever remove his name from the 5 trophies that his name is etched upon.
Aaron
Apr 3, 2015 at 11:18 am
Jimmy Walker’s career reminds me of Tom Lehman’s.
Dan
Apr 3, 2015 at 8:35 am
First off, ease up on this kid. He’s a kid.
Second, I commend any college kid who takes the initiative and puts his passion to use in the real world.
I think the title is misleading because the article really isn’t about Jimmy Walker, it’s about the statistical possibility of a 36 year old late bloomer.
Chris S
Apr 3, 2015 at 5:11 am
+1
Big Tom
Apr 2, 2015 at 7:00 pm
Who is Kevin Casey and why would anyone care what he has to say? I find the premise of this article quite offensive because it was written by a nobody whose opinion, when combined with a quarter, is worth exactly $0.25.
Prime21
Apr 2, 2015 at 6:26 pm
Statistics give us the ability to organize, analyze, and interpret large amounts of numerical data. Armed with this information, we can compare/contrast players’ abilities as it relates to their peers. We may even use these numbers to compare modern day players to those who may no longer play the game competitively. While this comparison may provide a player insight as to their strengths and weaknesses, the numbers alone cannot provide us with enough information to make accurate predictions of future success and/or failure. Because key attributes such as heart, desire, & work ethic, cannot be quantified, predictions excluding these factors provide insufficient data.
While you touch on your background in journalism, you fail to provide information regarding your athletic background. Have you played competitive golf? Do you play any sports? To me, the information you could supply here, would be just as pertinent to the article as your beloved statistics.
You state, “Walker is 36 years old and just a couple of seasons away from an age where professional golfers generally face a steep decline.” “The greatest late bloomer of this generation, Vijay Singh, only made it to 45 before his steep decline, and another age-less wonder, Phil Mickelson, jumped off his performance cliff at age 43.” By my calculations this gives Jimmy 7-9 years of potentially great golf. Not knowing his personal training regime, it is impossible to predict if he will have a similar time table as Vijay or Phil, but if he were to keep himself in prime condition, this could extend those 7-9 years out to possibly 12 years. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Jimmy Walker at age 36 is in much better shape than both players mentioned above, which once again, could potentially postpone his decline even further. “Contrast that with guys like Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler who could have decades before they decline and still haven’t reached the average peak golf years for a pro.” While these players are certainly younger than Jimmy, one cannot assume that they will still be playing in 10 years. The potential for a longer “peak” career is just that, potential.
“We also tend to overrate wins and treat them as the only barometer to measuring a player’s greatness. Victories only represent a player’s best few weeks, why wouldn’t we look at their full list of performances when evaluating them?” To answer your question, the goal of every player when putting a peg in the ground in a PGA Tour event is to win. EVERY player out there would take 10 W’s and 0 Top 5’s, over 4 wins, 10 seconds, and 6 thirds. When a player wins 5 times in two seasons, the results are far from a mere representation of his best few weeks.
“Walker has absolutely no control on where the ball will go off the tee.” If this were true, how could he possibly post 5 victories in the past 2 seasons? I find it ironic that you bash Jimmy’s driving ability but reference the age-less wonder Phil Mickelson in the same article. Has Phil ever driven the ball with Fred Funk accuracy? How does Phil’s major record look at this point in his career?
In the “Major” section, you go from quoting statistics to offering personal opinion. Where is this analysis coming from? Does Journalism class at Northwestern provide you with insight into a players potential in Major Championships? “I’d say he has a good chance this year”. “If Walker’s decline starts around age 38, I don’t think he wins a major.” “But if he can get about a half-dozen more cracks at Augusta in or near his prime, he will snag a Green Jacket.” When one begins a sentence with I’d say, or If, they are simply offering their opinion of what could happen. Once again, I do not see anything in your background that gives you a leg to stand on here. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you have no background in covering Tournament Golf, or playing Tournament Golf, your opinion holds no weight.
“In the next couple of years, Walker will add to his win total at a slower rate. After that, aging might get the better of him, but we’ll see.” You write an article that you know will NOT be received well by those who are fans of Jimmy Walker. But instead of taking a stand and hiding behind the statistical “evidence” provided in the first few sections, here, you tuck your tail and hide. You should have finished with something more powerful, such as, “He will win again, but as he ages he may not, but in the end I don’t know what’s going to happen so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Access to PGA Tour Statistics and the Google search engine allows for anyone to question a player’s ability and/or make predictions about what a player’s future may hold. But after 5 W’s in the past 2 seasons do we really need to? Keep winning Jimmy, even though the statistics say you can’t!
Golfraven
Apr 2, 2015 at 5:21 pm
tough but true. He is cool player though and hard as nails. Great to watch!
Steve Wozeniak
Apr 2, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Just keep winning Jimmy!!!!! His Coach at Baylor Tim Hobby is one of the best players in Texas and is one of my students. Jimmy was one of his first recruits and he groomed that great swing. So all Butch has had to do the last few years is say nice swing Jimmy, keep it up, easy gig if you can get it!!!!
Steve Wozeniak PGA
http://www.stevewozeniak.com
Greg
Apr 2, 2015 at 2:17 pm
I took a few lessons from Tim Hobby years ago when I lived in Waco. He is truly a great teacher and player.
Duncan
Apr 1, 2015 at 9:53 pm
Kevin, where do you get the idea that JW doesn’t hit the ball high? I saw him in person at the masters last year and the only one who hit a higher 4 iron off #4 was Bubba. And if you can remember, almost no one could hit it high enough to stop the ball on that green. I was very impressed with the towering bombs that Jimmy hit. I left there thinking he IS one of the game’s best players.
Kevin Casey
Apr 2, 2015 at 12:51 am
Hey Duncan,
That must have been a cool experience! I feel like that’s subtly a really good spot at Augusta.
Anyway, I didn’t say that Walker wasn’t a high ball hitter. Going back to my words in the article: “He doesn’t hit it as high as you would think, but Walker can still loft it up there pretty well.”
I said that he does still hit it pretty high, just not to the height you would think. What does that mean? Well, clubhead speed/driving distance correlate a lot to ball flight. with the fastest swingers/longest hitters tending to possess the highest ball flights and slow swingers/short hitters possessing the lowest ones (there are certainly exceptions both ways, though).
Walker is top 20 on Tour in driving distance, so you’d expect him to be roughly top 20 in ball flight height, but the stats show something different. The main metric we look at here is PGATOUR.com’s “Apex Height” tabulation. This stat shows the average peak height of a player’s ball flight on a number of drives throughout the year. Not perfect, but gives us a good measurement of whose golf balls reach the greatest height in flight.
Looking over the last three years, Walker has been something like 65th, 25th and 110th in the category, which speaks to a player who has a high ball flight but not to the top 20 distinction one might presume.
That being said, that stat could be skewed if Walker purposefully flights his ball down more than the average PGA Tour pro. If that is the case, he could be a really high ball hitter whose Apex Height numbers drop because of these intentional knockdown drives. But I don’t know that is the case with Jimmy for sure without some sort of database.
The Apex Height stat is an average and the Tour offers up the player’s highest Apex Height among the sample, and Walker’s is really high. Walker’s average Apex Height in 2015 is 104’6″ (65th in that category) and his peak in 2015 has been 154’9″ (maybe top-10 in that category). That could point to my theory about Walker flghting the ball down more than the average pro. Or it could show that Walker can reach massive heights but struggles to consistently sky it up there. Or that peak number could be a fluke.
What all of this is to say is that the data is kind of limited here, and from that protracted set, the conclusion is that Walker is a high-ball hitter but not to the extent his distance would suggest (top-20). Everything else is just conjecture.
Ben
Apr 1, 2015 at 9:24 pm
This is a solid, well thought out piece that does a good job of letting the facts speak for themselves. Because it was written in this way, it rises above the simple emotional response. If your gonna attach it, at least bring the same amount of data and research.
Prime21
Apr 2, 2015 at 4:16 pm
While statistics are given throughout the article, referring to them as research is quite a stretch. If the facts, as you call them, truly were to speak for themselves, there would be no reason for his sections to end with statements of opinion (If….I’d say….I don’t think….). Considering the author is questioning Jimmy Walker’s abilities as well as his potential for future success, he had to know that his article would be “attached” by any JW fan who happened to read it.
Nelly11
Apr 1, 2015 at 9:15 pm
Tough Crowd. Jimmy Walker has won 5 times in the last 17 months at the top of golf, winning almost $3.5 million this year alone and this thing is littered with negativity and talk of an imminent decline. Really? I hope articles like this continue to fuel his amazing career.
I’m a big fan of his game, he has it all. I hope to follow at the Tuesday practice round and perhaps even pick up a thing or two watching him to help my game. Amazing talent.
The dude
Apr 1, 2015 at 9:15 pm
KC…..hater
Keep winning JW!!!!
Kevin Casey
Apr 1, 2015 at 8:34 pm
Definitely wouldn’t disagree with that general sentiment there. When I say his wins are against mediocre or weak fields, I am putting it to the incredibly high PGA Tour standard. And Walker has had some great finishes against some of the world’s toughest fields (top 10s at three majors and the Players last year).
I feel like this article is being misconstrued as me being a Jimmy Walker hater. I am not. Really good player that I think will stay at or near his current level of performance for at least the next couple of years. And I think he has a decent shot of hanging on to his prime past the general decline age.
I just don’t think he will continue to win at this same clip or is the top American, both incredibly high standards some have put on him. It’s not negative, it’s realistic.
devilsadvocate
Apr 2, 2015 at 10:32 am
I feel where u are TRYING to come from…. But dude read your article… A little rough don’t u think? I don’t know about you but I have seen this guy on the very top of the FedEx cup points list for most of the last two seasons and I watched a couple of his victories in which he won by a large margin… Pretty obviously an elite player right now imho
Erlybrd
Apr 1, 2015 at 7:23 pm
Regardless of what this columnist says, Jimmy Walker is playing great against tough competitions and scoring lower than everyone more often than not. Sure all careers have ups and downs, but let’s hope he will keep his good play for many more years to come.
Kevin Casey
Apr 1, 2015 at 8:37 pm
Whoops, meant to put the above reply here.