How Tony Finau found putting salvation from Bruce Lee

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Tony Finau had to stop.

Every time he didn’t play well he faulted the weakest part of his game, his putting, and reached for wholesale changes. The left-hand low grip. The claw. A new putter head. But going into last season, he had an epiphany: What if all those changes were backfiring?

And so, at the outset of 2022, he resolved to try something really new: staying the course.

“Don't change your putter grip this year and see what happens,” said Finau, whose three-shot victory of Jon Rahm at the Mexico Open at Vidanta on Sunday was his fourth win in less than a year. “Anytime I was in a putting rut, I seemed to switch grips or switch putting heads. It was a quick fix … I’d have a great week or two and then I’d be back in the same mess if not even a deeper hole with my putting further down the stretch.

“I decided that I was going to commit to putting conventionally for a full season, no matter how I was putting, just figure it out.”

It’s worked. Finau began the last round with a two-shot lead over world No. 1 Rahm on Sunday, made an 11-foot birdie putt at the first hole, drained a long par save at the eighth, and cruised with a 5-under 66 to win by three over Rahm, with whom he plays often at Scottsdale’s Silverleaf Club in Arizona.

Finau went from 16th to 11th in the world, and joined Rahm, Max Homa and Scottie Scheffler as multiple PGA TOUR winners this season. The key, Finau said, has been his work on the greens, where he is cruising at 25th in Strokes Gained: Putting this season. He was 85th last season, up from 91st a few years ago, and way up from his career low, 134th in 2017.

He works on it with his regular coach, Boyd Summerhays, but also a friend back in Utah, Derek Fox, with whom he’ll fine-tune on a SAM PuttLab at Fox’s Impact Golf Center in Draper.

Finau said his commitment to one style has helped him settle down, even if he’s still tempted to switch things up when the putts aren’t falling. As he headed down to Mexico last week, he admitted he was tempted to try something different, but resisted the urge. Good thing.

Asked if there was a lesson there, Finau nodded in the affirmative.

“No question, I think it's a great lesson to be learned,” he said. “It's a lot better to be great at one thing than tinker around with 10,000 different techniques and trying to figure it out.

“I think Bruce Lee has a saying about something like that,” he continued. “He's more scared of the guy who practices one punch 10,000 times than someone who practices 10,000 things one time. I'd say I agree with that.”