Sean O'Hair and "playing to win"

Did Sean O’Hair have the right strategy on the 17^th on Sunday when he fired at the pin? O’Hair said he was playing to win, and he hit a good shot, and it just went a bit long due to adrenaline. In the end, maybe his decision to go for the pin doesn’t matter, as he hit it long enough that it might have flown the green no matter where he aimed it. But let’s forget that part of it. Should he have gone for the pin on 17?

It bugs me when players justify extremely risky moves by saying they were “playing to win.” You see this a lot. You’ll see a player in second place try to fly a water hazard from a bad lie and crash and burn into a 10^th place finish, or you’ll see a player who needs to make a 50 footer to get into a playoff whack it 10 feet by the hole and miss the comebacker. In each case, he’ll say in the interview afterwards that he was playing to win. Were they really maximizing their chance of winning?

The ideal speed to hole a putt is such that it would go 17 inches by the hole if it missed. If you’re playing to win, you should try to hit the ball at this optimal speed. Or maybe slightly harder if you’re feeling gutsy, but don’t get carried away with this get-the-ball-to-the-hole idea. Your odds of making a putt fall sharply if you hit it too hard (as do your odds of making the comebacker, obviously). A player trying to hole a 50 footer to get into a playoff shouldn’t be afraid of leaving the ball on the front lip. Sometimes that’s going to happen if you’re trying to hit the ball optimal speed to go in the hole.

In Sean O’Hair’s case, he was two shots behind with two holes left. If he had made it to 18 down by two shots, I would have given him a pretty decent chance of winning. Phil had commented in an interview earlier in the week about how intimidating the tee shot on 18 was, and was three feet from putting his tee ball in the water on Saturday. Given Phil’s misses to the right on his tee shots at the 18^th holes at Winged Foot and Riviera in the past year to lose tournaments, if I were O’Hair, I would’ve loved to have put the pressure on Phil on 18 to see what he would do.

What O’Hair needed on 17 was a par. This is especially true if you consider how much there was to gain from a second place finish for O’Hair. The media liked to report how O’Hair’s collapse on 17 and 18 cost him over $750,000. But it also cost him the confidence and reputation that he could hang with the best on a Sunday of a big event. It cost him Ryder Cup points, President Cup points, FedEx Cup points, money for the money list rankings, and World Ranking points. It cost him momentum going into his next tournament and for the rest of the year.

I don’t really blame O’Hair here. From close range, it’s never too foolish to go for a pin. I guess, like everyone else who watched, I just felt bad about what happened to him and his “playing to win” comment got me thinking. Whether or not he made a strategic mistake (his club choice could be the subject of another blog post), the strategies certain players take when they’re “playing to win” can seem foolish to me. Playing to win should sometimes mean making a par and seeing if the other guy stumbles. Besides, there’s so much to gain from a second or third place finish – and it’s not just money.