Opinion & Analysis
Ways to Win: Let it happen – JT spoils DeChambeau vs. Westwood rematch

One of the hardest things in golf is following up a great round with another. After two days of the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, Justin Thomas was closer to the cut line than he was to the lead, but a blistering 64 set the low mark on moving day and vaulted him into contention. Heading into the final round, the stage was set for Bryson DeChambeau vs. Lee Westwood for the second week in a row, Thomas was the snake in the grass, waiting to strike.
Winning is never easy at the challenging Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, and Thomas has been pretty open about his recent struggles winning golf tournaments, suggesting he has been trying too hard to win, rather than letting it come to him as a result of good play. Sunday at The Players would test his patience, particularly as he started much slower than he did in the third round, where he posted four birdies in a row.
Thomas started out with seven consecutive pars and two-putted from seven, nine, and 11 feet. The frustration had to be growing as he saw opportunities slide by while the leaders continued to leave the door open with their own play. To add to that frustration, Thomas three-putted the eighth hole from 38 feet to fall several back.
Using the Strokes Gained Heatmap from his V1 Game scorecard confirms that Thomas was striking the ball extremely well, gaining five strokes from tee to green on the front nine. His putter was truly letting him down and the best cure for a balky putter is hitting it closer, which he did on hole 9, leading to a tap-in birdie and jumpstarting his back-nine run to the title. Patience paid off as he made a birdie putt from seven feet on 10 and an eagle putt from 19 feet on 11 to take a lead he would never relinquish.
Thomas continues to be an outlier in our Ways to Win articles as he continues to win despite his putting, rather than because of it. Most weeks on the PGA TOUR, the winner is the player who putts the best amongst the best ball strikers. Thomas seems to win almost in spite of his putting.
V1 Game highlights JT’s Strokes Gained performance across categories for the week. He struggled early in the tournament with each facet of the game, but it was his Tee-to-Green play that carried him through the weekend as his putter ran hot and cold. In fact, referencing his final-round scorecard above, Thomas did not miss a green in regulation during the final round until the last hole. The game gets easier when you hit greens.
The Shot Histogram from V1 Game highlights Thomas’ strengths and weaknesses by ‘type of shot’ and ‘distance from the hole.’ The size of the bars in the graph shows how many attempts Thomas had from each distance and are colored by the type of lie. The line shows his Strokes Gained performance in each bucket where a higher number is better.
There are two big takeaways from the Shot Histogram. The first is that Thomas gave strokes to the field putting from less than three feet and greater than 21 feet. The second is that he gained strokes on the field for every Tee-to-Green category with the exception of 126-150 yards. His ball striking is phenomenal, but the distance from 126-150 yards is a surprising outlier. Luckily with V1 Game, it is easy to dive deeper. With a simple ‘Tap’ we can dive into the details of that distance bucket to find that he had a penalty from that yardage. One more tap and we are taken to the exact shot on Thursday when he missed the famous island green and lost 2 strokes with one swing.
Based on the data, Thomas should not be too worried about his performance from 126-150 yards. Removing the two strokes lost from the tee shot on 17, he would have gained 0.15 strokes from 126-150 yards and gained strokes in all Tee-to-Green categories. Truly impressive.
Thomas is an extraordinary ball striker and separates himself from the field with Tee-to-Green performance. His putter is streaky and, if he were able to find more consistency with it, he would win at an even higher clip.
Patience pays off. Thomas found a way to let the result come to him rather than forcing the issue. Golf is different from other sports in that it is not an ‘effort’ sport. Trying harder or wanting it more does not necessarily work in the same way on the golf course as it does on the football field. In fact, it often gets in the way. One shot at a time. A cliche’, but accurate.
Opinion & Analysis
The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

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
Podcasts
Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

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!
Opinion & Analysis
On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

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.
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“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.
ben
Mar 20, 2021 at 2:08 pm
Great article indeed! No pundit needed To have a great insight.
Bob
Mar 17, 2021 at 10:28 pm
I rarely say this, this is a great article. Can we get one for how Bryson lost on Sunday?