Just off the top of my head, I think it’s the opposite. I tend to think Pelz showed what putting was all about 30 years ago. And quite frankly, in the short term there’s a ton of luck involved.

Pelz showed that putting on even the best of greens is nothing like putting on a pool table where you can easily make 9 foot putts over and over. On a green you can hit a perfect 9 foot putt that doesn’t touch the hole. Or you can hit a great approach shot to 9 feet where the putt is brutal.

I think it’s next to impossible to win a tournament while below average in ball striking because you can’t make up that many strokes on the greens. But there have been some great ball strikers over the years and now Scottie that can putt average and still win.

I'm guessing it's happened in PGA Tour history where someone has been negative strokes gained Tee to Green and still won, but I agree it's exceedingly hard.

First one that came to mind was last year's Memorial. Denny McCarthy was +0.47 SG T2G per round and lost in a playoff.

That was the week where Scottie finished solo 3rd by one shot. If he putted average for the week he would have won by 7 and if he had Denny McCarthy's putting week he would have won by 19.

We can agree to disagree on this. Pelz claimed the 50/50 putt was 6 feet (backed by his evidence), now it is about 8.5 feet. So obviously there has been a pretty significant improvement since Pelz' time. How much it can continue to improve is anybody's guess, but with the rollback of the ball I see even more ugency in improving putting, in particular the highly leveraged range of 8-10 feet.

Based on the research I've done on the subject, the top SG putting player for an event is around +8. SG off the tee is around +5.

Supergrunch. Id guess driving well is now controllable and putting well is more random walk.