Early in September of 2019, Harris English took part in the Korn Ferry Tour playoffs in a desperate attempt to keep his PGA Tour card. He failed.
By the time the month ended, though, English had recorded third- and sixth-place finishes in the first two PGA Tour events of the new season, and it was full speed ahead from there.
English's transformation was completed Sunday at Kapalua, where he defeated Joaquin Niemann on the first playoff hole to win the Sentry Tournament of Champions and claim his first victory in eight years.
English was ranked 369th in the world when he tied for 26th in the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Championship. Now, 16 months later, he sits a career-best 17th. In the past 16 months, English played 27 tournaments. He recorded 10 top-10s and 18 top-25s before winning against an elite, year-opening field of 42. It was his third career victory and first since 2013 at Mayakoba.
English, 31, didn't just gradually start to play better that September. It was instant. And he has been strong across the board, from tee box to putting green. There really is no weakness in his game. Driving distance is perhaps his weakest component and he still averaged over 300 yards last season.
In just the past four months, English has three of the top five results of his 10-year career. The others were a runner-up at The Northern Trust in the playoffs and a fourth-place finish at the U.S. Open.
RotoWire's long-standing golf
Early in September of 2019, Harris English took part in the Korn Ferry Tour playoffs in a desperate attempt to keep his PGA Tour card. He failed.
By the time the month ended, though, English had recorded third- and sixth-place finishes in the first two PGA Tour events of the new season, and it was full speed ahead from there.
English's transformation was completed Sunday at Kapalua, where he defeated Joaquin Niemann on the first playoff hole to win the Sentry Tournament of Champions and claim his first victory in eight years.
English was ranked 369th in the world when he tied for 26th in the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Championship. Now, 16 months later, he sits a career-best 17th. In the past 16 months, English played 27 tournaments. He recorded 10 top-10s and 18 top-25s before winning against an elite, year-opening field of 42. It was his third career victory and first since 2013 at Mayakoba.
English, 31, didn't just gradually start to play better that September. It was instant. And he has been strong across the board, from tee box to putting green. There really is no weakness in his game. Driving distance is perhaps his weakest component and he still averaged over 300 yards last season.
In just the past four months, English has three of the top five results of his 10-year career. The others were a runner-up at The Northern Trust in the playoffs and a fourth-place finish at the U.S. Open.
RotoWire's long-standing golf league will hold its salary cap draft Monday night. English just ensured his price will be even higher than it was expected to be. His price last year? $1.
MONDAY BACKSPIN
Because this is the first tournament of 2021 and the field is only 42, we'll make a one-week exception and recap every golfer!
Joaquin Niemann (runner-up)
As we have pointed out in the past, Niemann is still only 22 -- younger than Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland. After a lights-out 9-under 64 on Sunday, he played the lone playoff hole like a 22-year-old, badly missing his approach when he had the advantage over English. But that's nitpicking for someone now up to a personal-best 31st in the OWGR. Niemann's putting is vastly improved in the early stages of the 2020-21 campaign and he ranked 15th at Kapalua. If that holds, he will find himself sitting comfortably on many leaderboards.
Justin Thomas (3rd)
Thomas missed the playoff by a stroke. He shot 7-under 66 on Sunday after he became embroiled in controversy when the TV camera caught him uttering a slur on the course on Saturday. Thomas apologized quickly, but we wondered if his play would be affected. It wasn't.
Ryan Palmer (4th)
Palmer had a bad final round, only going 2-under. But it was a great week and continued his fine play from 2020. He also finished fourth last year at Kapalua. Palmer is outstanding off the tee and with his irons, but gets foiled from 100 yards and in. That adds up to many high finishes while rarely contending. This was one of those rare times.
Xander Schauffele (T5)
Not even a bout of COVID-19 over the holidays could slow Schauffele at Kapalua. He was runner-up last year and the winner in 2019. Even though he's now gone more than two years since that last win, he moved to a career-best fourth in the OWGR. There is no weakness in Schauffele's game and it's hard to imagine that winless streak going on much longer.
Sungjae Im (T5)
Im led the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green but ranked 35th of 42 in SG: Putting. With the enormous and devilish greens, that's understandable. After falling off his game after the restart over the summer, Im seems back in form and ready to contend often in 2021. He's up to career-best 18th in the OWGR.
Bryson DeChambeau (T7)
DeChambeau made an eagle on the72nd hole to break into the top-10. He characteristically led the field in driving distance and SG: Off-the-Tee, but struggled on in, especially on the greens, where he ranked 27th in the field. That should not move anyone off their assumption that DeChambeau could have another big year.
Jon Rahm (T7)
Playing with new Callaway clubs and balls, Rahm might not have his best – yet still was on the first page of the leader board. He ranked only 20th and 21st in SG: Off-the-Tee and Approach, respectively, pedestrian numbers for someone of Rahm's caliber. Still, it doesn't appear there will be a long learning curve with the new equipment.
Collin Morikawa (T7)
While many guys went super low on Sunday, even in windy conditions, Morikawa did not. He ranked seventh of the week in SG: Tee-to-Green but his putting needed to better. Morikawa is the highest-ranked player making the jump from Maui to Honolulu for the Sony Open in Hawaii, and the tighter fairways and greens at Waialae should make him more formidable.
Daniel Berger (10th)
Berger is normally solid across all SG categories but not this week. He ranked sixth in the field off the tee and was second in greens in regulation, but his chipping and putting were not good. That will need to improve for his to contend this week at the Sony.
Dustin Johnson (T11)
Johnson hadn't picked up a club for a while until getting back to practice on Monday. His family vacationed in Hawaii over the holidays, and his game reflected that. So we'll give the world No. 1 a pass on the week.
Sergio Garcia (T11)
Playing Kapalua for the first time since 2006, this was a good result for Garcia, even more so when you factor in the fact that he ranked 39th in putting, especially considering. Now in his 40s, Garcia is still world-class everywhere but on the green. He ranked second in SG: Off-the-Tee, second in SG: Around-the-Green and fourth in SG: Tee-to-Green. That's good enough to contend most weeks, even without the putter.
Patrick Cantlay (T13)
It was a so-so week for a top-10 player, continuing a stretch of so-so play that extends back to last summer. Of course, we're excluding Cantlay's ZOZO win from that analysis, but that is an outlier – his only time truly contending in all of 2020. Cantlay ranked only T31 in greens in regulation. Not so good.
Scottie Scheffler (T13)
Cantlay tied for 31st in GIR with Scheffler, whose worst part of his game was normally his best. Scheffler now does not have a top-10 in seven starts in 2020-21, after such a lights-out stretch to end last season. He's months removed from a positive COVID-19 test that knocked him out of the U.S. Open, but he hasn't been the same since.
Brendon Todd (T13)
Todd didn't play very well through the fall, so this result was encouraging. He ranked 16th in SG: Approach, a stat that had been a real problem for him of late. And he ranked fifth in both SG: Around-the-Green and Putting.
Lanto Griffin (T13)
Griffin continues to show he can hold his own in top fields, thanks largely to his trusty putter. He ranked fourth in putting on the week. He was top-20 at the PAG Championship, top-10 at the BMW playoff event and T7/T11 at the stacked CJ Cup/ZOZO.
Abraham Ancer (T17)
Ancer finished 2020 with a pair of top-15s and just missed another. He ranked third in the field in putting. He's still looking for his first win, and he'll try at the Sony this week.
Webb Simpson (T17)
Simpson is another player coming off a positive COVID-19 test. We don't know how that affected Simpson. He did ranked fifth in SG: Approach and seventh in SG: Around-the-Green, but his putting was off. He'll also be at Waialae this week.
Sebastian Munoz (T17)
Munoz was decent in all facets of his game, nothing really exceptional. So T17 seems about right. Munoz is up to 56th in the world, and continues to show he can compete on the biggest stages.
Martin Laird (T17)
There were eight guys who were outlier winners in 2020 and, to us, clearly in the low tier of the 42 golfers at Kapalua. Only one could crack the top-20 – Laird. He played about as well as he could. Like the other seven, we don't expect much from them this year.
Michael Thompson (T21)
Thompson is another one of those eight outliers. Thompson ranked second in the field in putting, but that by itself, however great, is not enough.
Patrick Reed (T21)
This was a big surprise. Reed ranked sixth in SG: Putting, which is predictable. But his wedge play was way off and, after making great strides of late, so were his irons. We expect this to be the aberration. We'll find out more this week at the Sony.
Adam Scott (T21)
We spend a good deal of energy saying that Scott is a better putter than the narrative that's out there states. And then he had a bad putting week, and an even worse week scrambling – he was 34th in putting and last in scrambling. That torpedoed his week, even when ranked third in SG: Off-the-Tee.
Billy Horschel (T24)
Horschel began the final round in the top-10, ballooned to a 75 with a closing double bogey and that was that. As someone who had Horschel in the RotoWire league last year, it was just another disappointing performance in a string of them over the past year. Maybe he's just not that good.
Kevin Kisner (T24)
Good putter, short off the tee. Kisner ranked seventh in SG: Putting, which ordinarily results in a higher finish that T24. But he was second-to-last in driving distance. Kisner has courses where he can make some noise; Kapalua isn't one of them.
Marc Leishman (T24)
Leishman has been off this game ever since the restart in June. There were some bright spots at Kapalua, notably ranking eighth in SG: Approach. But he lost more than five strokes on the greens, and Leishman is still a "caution" until he shows otherwise.
Cameron Smith (T24)
Smith was long and pretty accurate off the tee, so ranking only 35th in the field in greens in regulation was surprising. If you can't hit the enormous greens of Kapalua, what will happen at the far smaller greens of Waialae, where Smith will defend his Sony Open title this week.
Richy Werenski (T24)
We don't include Werenski among our eight outlier winners of 2020, but if there was a ninth he be it. Statistically, Werenski wasn't terrible anywhere at the TOC. But he wasn't great anywhere, either. Just getting into the field was a big win for Werenski, thanks to a very little win at the Barracuda Championship.
Brian Gay (T29)
One of the outliers, part of the just-happy-to-be-here group. He ranked 13th in putting, and he had to do far better to have made some noise. Still, since he was priced at $6,100 on DraftKings, it's a good week no matter, especially because this will probably the final Kapalua visit for the 49-year-old.
Nick Taylor (T29)
Another outlier. Taylor did what he had to do, ranking 10th in the field in SG: Around-the-Green and 11th in Putting. He just doesn't have enough firepower to contend in an elite field.
Tony Finau (T31)
Finau is definitely putting much better, so this is a surprising result. And then when you see he ranked eighth in SG: Off-the-Tee, then this is really surprising. He ranked 36th in the field in SG: Approach, and you can't imagine that happening to him too often. We're still bullish on Finau – his putting will surprise.
Cameron Champ (T31)
Champ was predictably second in distance but last in the field in accuracy, which is really saying something with 50-yard-plus fairways. He also ranked 37th in SG: Putting, which is an on-going issue for him.
Stewart Cink (T31)
Cink was among the group of tournament winners who came out of the blue. But it was nice that the 47-year-old got to play Kapalua likely one final time. He didn't do anything really badly, but he wasn't strong anywhere, either. He ranked top-20 in just one SG category – 19th in Approach.
Viktor Hovland (T31)
Hovland was a Kapalua rookie and it showed on the greens, where he ranked 38th in SG: Putting. You simply have to putt well to do well here, even when you ranked fifth in SG: Off-the-Tee. Hovland fell to 28th in SG: Approach, so clearly a lot was wrong besides his putter.
Hudson Swafford (T35)
Here was another golfer simply fortunate to be there thanks to a surprise win in one of the weakest fields in the wrap-around era, which began in 2013 (Puntacana). Swafford was good off the tee and on the green at Kapalua, which tells you how bad the in-between parts were. He ranked dead last in SG: Around-the-Green.
Jason Kokrak (T35)
Kokrak was a first-timer and a poor putter, a double whammy. Yet he wasn't terrible on the greens, ranking 23rd in SG: Putting. Incredibly, he lost strokes off the tee and from the fairway, and that hardly ever happens to him. He gets a chance to correct himself this week at Waialae, where his normal accuracy could pay dividends.
Carlos Ortiz (37th)
Ortiz was a Kapalua rookie, but it's hard to blame that on his poor performance. After all, he shot 69-67 the first two days before blowing up to a 75-74 finish, culminating with a walk-off double bogey. Driver wasn't his problem, as he ranked third in SG: Off-the-Tee. Despite that, he was last in the field in SG: Approach, which is quite the quinella.
Kevin Na (T38)
Na finished with a double-bogey on the par-5 18th on Sunday, punctuating a terrible final round that saw him blow up with a 79, the worst round of the tournament. He lost strokes to the field in every strokes-gained category, even putting, where he ranked fifth on Tour last season.
Andrew Landry (T38)
Outlier It's very hard to get a high finish at Kapalua without strong putting and Landry can't putt. He is ranked outside the top-200 on Tour in SG: Putting so far this season. He managed only 14 birdies all week, better than only two other golfers.
Robert Streb (T38)
Outlier. Streb has played Kapalua before, but that didn't help him. His out-of-nowhere win landed him in this elite field, and that was nothing but reinforced over the four days.
Mackenzie Hughes (T41)
Hughes' strength is his short game. It wasn't very good at Kapalua. He was second-to-last in SG: Putting. Kapalua's greens are tricky, especially for first-timers, but Hughes simply couldn't figure them out. He was last in birdies with a mere 11, though he did have one eagle.
Hideki Matsuyama (T41)
Matsuyama is a bad putter but he was bad even for himself, losing almost 10 strokes on the greens over the four days. The rest of his game, normally very strong, was also off. He ranked 23rd in SG: Tee-to-Green. Matsuyama usually is a top-25 machine who has trouble cracking the top-10 because of his putter. Some guys are just in a funk at the beginning of the year. Matsuyama will try again this week at Waialae.
