No way to sugarcoat it, Luke List’s first-round BMW putting performance was one of the worst in tour history

There are several ways to look at Luke List’s season. He won his first PGA Tour event this year at the Farmers Insurance Open, beating Will Zalatoris in a playoff. He’s playing in the BMW Championship, the second FedEx Cup playoff event. He entered the week 42nd in FedEx Cup points, meaning a good performance at Wilmington Country Club could send him to the Tour Championship next week in Atlanta.

However, List is in the midst of a slump, missing his last four cuts and five out of the last six. He’s missed 10 cuts since his win, including a WD, and his best finish since Torrey Pines is a tie for 19th place at the Travelers Championship.

The good news is that there isn’t a cut to miss this week at the BMW Championship. The bad news is that he shot a first-round 78 Thursday to tie for last place and his putting performance was one of the worst in recent PGA Tour history.

According to golf data analyst Rick Gehman, who runs rickrungood.com and writes a weekly column for GolfDigest.com, List completed the third worst putting round of any player dating back to 2008. List lost a whopping 8.54 strokes in putting to the field. Joe Durant was -9.12 at the 2008 Wachovia Championship and Keith Mitchell was -8.88 at last year’s Valspar Championship at Innisbrook. As Gehman pointed out, Mitchell later discovered that he was using a bent putter during his frustrating round.

On Thursday, List, 37, made seven bogeys for his seven-over-par round. He missed seven putts inside 10 feet and three-putted the first and second holes to start his round, from 26 feet and 60 feet respectively. List had 38 total putts on the day.

The opening round is certainly a difficult one for List to swallow, but his putting has been an issue all season. He’s ranked 200th in strokes gained/putting on the year and is 199th in total putting.