Jason

Dufner

Dufner arrived with some flashes of form lately, despite a 1-for-2 record to start the new season. Zooming out a bit further, the Auburn product was T7 thru 54 holes of the Barbasol Championship and was T4 after round one of the Fortinet Championship while piecing together top 30s in four of his last six starts. He kept that steady play rolling today and it started with a hot putter. Dufner split 9-of-13 fairways, landed 12 greens in regulation, then gained 2.85 strokes putting. “I thought I played pretty well. I was pretty happy for the most part everything I did, but a couple key parts kind of in the middle of the round a couple times helped kind of glue that round together and maybe turned a 70, 69, 68 into a 66. So I’ll take those two shots or three shots with those saves and look to improve on my ball-striking.”

To no one’s surprise, the 44-year-old has been striking the ball beautifully since the beginning of July. Posting performances of +10.3, +6.4, +4.3, +5.1, and +3.1 Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green in his last five measured tournaments, Dufner appears primed to return to weekend contention. Making his eighth Houston Open appearance this week, H-Town has not treated the Auburn alum all too well. Four missed cuts have been accompanied by zero top-10’s in Dufner’s career. While things may look bleak in Houston, Dufner has found success in the state of Texas with a victory at the 2012 Byron Nelson and a couple of runner-up efforts at the Charles Schwab.

Dufner didn’t make it look easy from tee to green but he putted the lights out to make his way up the board. The Auburn product split just 8-of-14 fairways en route to landing 15 greens. From there, he poured home five putts from outside of 11 feet including a 27'10" birdie bomb at the 14th. “I putted really well, which was nice. I made a lot of kind of those hole-able putts in the 8- to 15-foot range, so that was nice.” Dufner has just two top 25s over the last two seasons combined but off to a good start so far this week in Napa.

The 44-year-old, who opened with twin 71s, is chasing his 48th career top 10, first since T7 at the 2019 Memorial 44 starts ago as a former winner of the event. That’s also the last time he was in the top 10 after 54 holes, T10, before a 3-under 69 for the aforementioned T7. The Auburn alum’s most recent top 10 before that was three starts prior, a T4 here in the last edition played in 2019 (as the 36-hole leader by one), highlighted by a still-career-tying low 63 in R2 (68-63-71-73). On nine (of 14) fairways and 13 greens in regulation, he lost 0.248 strokes around-the-green but gained 0.985 off-the-tee and 1.047 on approach, currently No. 1 in SG: Approach with a cumulative 6.506. The Ohio native squared two bogeys at holes 6 and 18 (3-putt from 34'11"), camouflaged by six circles at 7, 10, 13-15 and 17, two from between 18 and 28 feet. He recorded a tidy 1.615 putts per GIR and 2.906 SG: Putting, buoyed by a par-save at 11 from 28'0". Dufner’s most recent of five TOUR victories in 371 previous events is the 2017 Memorial 94 starts ago, where he came from four back (T3) with 4-under 68 to win by three over Anirban Lahiri (65) and Rickie Fowler (70).

Dufner arrives with an 8-for-15 record on the season but just three of those have doubled as top 50s and the best result is just a T26 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This is coming off a full 19-event season without a top 25 for Dufner, so the slump continues to stretch out. A trip to Harbour Town Golf Links might be the perfect cure for the Auburn product who has earned a paycheck in 10 of his 12 appearances at the Heritage. That includes a T11 just four years, his third career top 25 at the event. Dufner ranks 73rd on TOUR in driving accuracy but just 202nd in birdie-or-better percentage. Gamers should continue to proceed with caution until he strings together a few good results.

Dufner celebrated his 43rd birthday in April but had little else to celebrate on the course during a lean year. A winner of the PGA Championship in 2013, Dufner made 21 PGA Tour starts this year but missed seven cuts and didn’t finish better than T-27 at the Honda Classic in March. Dufner hasn’t cracked the top 25 since the Barbasol (T-18) last summer, and his last top-10 finish remains a T-7 result at the 2018 Memorial Tournament. Dufner was the defending champ that week, and his 2017 win at Muirfield Village came with a three-year exemption that now extends through 2021 because of the pandemic. That means that Dufner remains fully exempt on Tour despite missing the playoffs each of the last of the last two seasons. Down to 353rd in the world, Dufner opened the 2020-21 campaign with a T-29 finish in Napa but failed to crack the top 50 in six subsequent starts, missing four cuts.

Dufner orchestrated this round with steady off-the-tee play. He piped 12-of-14 fairways on his way toward 13 GIR. The highlight of his day was a 55'3" hole out for birdie at the 7th but he also set up six scoring chances from inside of 15 feet (converted three of those). Dufner is making his 12th PLAYERS appearances and has a few notables finishes on his resume (T6 in 2011 and T5 in 2018). The Auburn product arrives on the heels of a T27 at The Honda Classic.

A run of three straight cuts made doesn’t seem terribly impressive, but considering he missed the cut in five straight events prior to The American Express, it’s certainly a start. He hasn’t been doing great in the Greens In Regulation (GIR) department, hitting just 268 greens in 396 holes. That’s an important stat in DFS, but certainly not the only one. However, he is also a dismal 112th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green, while registering 29.41 Putts Per Round to rank 148th, so he isn’t doing anything particularly well at the moment. He hasn’t appeared in this event since 2016 when he made the cut and ended up a mediocre 51st, although he was a solid 35th in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links last season.

Dufner made some headlines earlier this week when he announced he was joining Team Cobra. He’s been slowly transitioning but now he’s official and will use their driver, irons, and wedges moving forward. He won’t get a chance to use them this week after pulling his name from the field. At press time it’s not announced if this is injury-related or if he decided he didn’t want to fight through the start-and-stops that will happen this week due to all the rain Playa del Carmen has received.