bogey avoidance pga tour stats

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a]:underline [&>a]:text-team-secondary"> Seonghyeon Kim has the most bogeys this season, with 115 bogeys.

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A closer look at some of the stat leaders for the 2022-23 pga tour season, share this article.

The Tour Championship is in the rearview mirror and with that, the PGA Tour has closed the book on its statistics for the 2022-23 season. If you’ve been to the Tour’s stats page, you know it’s a rabbit hole where golf nerds can spend hours exploring the numbers.

There are plenty of eye-popping numbers, including the massive increase in earnings, but many will use these stats to determine the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year.

For example, Jon Rahm had the most wins (4), with Viktor Hovland winning the final two stops of the year to finish second with three victories. There were seven others, including Scottie Scheffler, another POY candidate, with two wins.

But it was Scheffler who dominated many of the Tour’s stats this season. He finished first in the Official World Golf Ranking, FedEx Cup regular-season standings, Ryder Cup standings as well as all of these categories:

• Shots gained: Off the tee
• Shots gained: Approach the green
• Shots gained: Tee-to-green
• Shots gained: Total
• Greens in regulation percentage

Scoring average

• Bogey avoidance

Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting statistical leaders on the PGA Tour for the 2022-23 season. Many of these will seem obvious, but there’s probably a few here that are surprising.

Driving distance

Rory McIlroy hits his tee shot on the seventh hole during the third round of the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship TPC Southwind. (Photo: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports)

Rory McIlroy won his third driving title this season (he also won in 2017, 2018), as he averaged 326.3 yards per drive. That’s more than 5.1 yards per drive longer than the next guy on the list, Brandon Matthews (321.2). It’s also the longest since the Tour started keeping the stat in 1980. Bryson DeChambeau’s 323.7 yards per drive in 2021 was the previous mark and McIlroy topped that by nearly three yards. Cameron Young (316.9), Cameron Champ (316.1) and Matti Schmid (315.8) round out the top five.

The PGA Tour average for driving distance is 299.9. There were 92 golfers who averaged more than 300 yards per drive.

Source: pgatour.com

Driving accuracy

Russell Henley plays from the 18th tee during the final round of the 2023 Wyndham Championship. (Photo: David Yeazell-USA TODAY Sports)

While Rory McIlroy was tops in driving distance, he was 157th in driving accuracy.

Russell Henley led the stats in the accuracy category, as he hit 71.74 percent of fairways during the season. Out of 1,118 possible fairways, Henley hit 802 of them. He was the only one over 70 percent for the year.

Collin Morikawa was next at 69.55 percent. Nos. 3 through 5 on this list are Ryan Moore, Aaron Rai, Ryan Armour.

Source: pgatour.com .

Greens in regulation

Scottie Scheffler plays a shot on the third hole during the first round of the 2023 AT&T Byron Nelson. (Photo: Raymond Carlin III-USA TODAY Sports)

Scheffler led the Tour in GIR at 74.47 percent after hitting 1,126 greens out of 1,512 holes played. Nos. 2 through 5 on this list: Kevin Yu (72.96), Doug Ghim (70.56), Jon Rahm (70.48) and Collin Morikawa (70.47).

Putting average

Taylor Montgomery lines up a putt for par on the 14th hole during round one of the 2023 WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: Alex Gould/The Republic)

Taylor Montgomery had the top putting average with 1.659 with Sam Ryder, Eric Cole, Max Homa and Sahith Theegala right behind. The Tour average was 1.765. Montgomery also led putts per round with 27.13. Maverick McNealy was first in SG: Putting at 1.058.

Most eagles

Kevin Tway plays from the sixth fairway during the first round of the 2023 RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, South Carolina. (Photo: David Yeazell-USA TODAY Sports)

Kevin Tway led the way with 18 eagles. The Tour average was two.

• Kevin Tway, 18
• Taylor Montgomery, 16
• Lee Hodges, 15
• Jon Rahm, 15
• Ryan Brehm, 14
• Hayden Buckley, 14
• Wyndham Clark, 14
• Vincent Norrman, 14
• Brandon Wu, 14

Most birdies

Eric Cole waves to fans after making a birdie on the eighth green during the second round of the 2023 Travelers Championship. (Photo: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports)

The Tour average was 90. Eric Cole was way above that average in the most birdies category as he collected 438 of them. Stephan Jaeger (434) Wyndham Clark (419), Ben An (418) and Sungjae Im (413) round out the top five.

Scottie Scheffler has a laugh before teeing off at the first hole during the third round of the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis. (Photo: Chris Day/The Commercial Appeal)

Scottie Scheffler was anything but average as he posted 68.629 for the season. Rory McIlroy (68.777) was not far behind. Those were the only two to go sub-69 for the season. Jon Rahm (69.037) was third with Xander Schauffele (69.083) fourth and Viktor Hovland (69.123) fifth.

Notable is that Scheffler played 88 Tour rounds this season, 24 more than McIlroy and 17 more than Rahm.

The Tour average was 71.091.

Brian Harman plays a shot from a bunker on the 12th hole on Day Two of The 151st Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club on July 21, 2023, in Hoylake, England. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

Brian Harman, Champion Golfer of the Year after winning his first major at the 2023 Open Championship, led this category at 67.74 percent.

The Tour average was 58.45.

Jonathan Byrd (66.35) was second to Harman, while Matt Kuchar (65.76) was third. J.J. Spaun (65.74) and Tommy Fleetwood (65.47) are fourth and fifth, respectively.

Jon Rahm and his caddie, Adam Hayes, stand with the Masters trophy during the green jacket ceremony at the 2023 Masters. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Network)

Rahm won four times, which was twice as many as the next guys on this list unless Viktor Hovland won this third in the season-ending Tour Championship. Rahm won two signature events and a major, his second career major, at the Masters. There were seven golfers with two wins each.

Non-member earnings

Brooks Koepka celebrates after winning the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)

On a list mostly filled with LIV golfers who earned official money at the 2023 majors, PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka is No. 1 with $5,057,192.

Scottie Scheffler holds up the 2023 Players Championship trophy at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Photo: Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union)

Scheffler set the mark for most money earned in a single season during the 2021-22 campaign with more than $14 million.

This season, thanks to two victories, in particular the Players Championship, and his 15 top 10s, Scheffler went over the $20 million mark, the first-ever to do so. To be exact, he made $21,014,342 .

Add up just his last two seasons and Scheffler has banked more than $35 million dollars. His career total is $40 million.

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How Often Do PGA Tour Pros 3-Putt?

It’s a moment that all players hope to avoid, but how often does it happen?

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Three-putts are incidents any golfer hopes to avoid in a round. After all, the par of a hole is always determined with the idea that a professional golfer will need two putts to complete it.

So, a par-3 assumes one shot to the green and two to putt, while a par-4 calculates it should take two shots to reach the green and two putts to finish. Similarly, a par-5 should take three shots to reach the green, followed by two putts.

A 3-putt – taking three putts on the green to finish the hole – is far from ideal and will more than likely result in a bogey or worse. But how often do PGA Tour pros 3-putt? Fortunately, there is a definitive answer to that question.

The PGA Tour collates the information under a category called 3-Putt Avoidance, which actually records incidences of 3-putts and worse - for example, Scottie Scheffler famously 4-putted on the final green of his 2022 Masters win . In 2021, the average number of 3-putts a PGA Tour pro had was 2.98 percent. Top of the list that year was 2018 Masters Champion Patrick Reed . The American competed in 81 rounds, playing 1,404 holes. Of those, just 22 included 3-putts. At the bottom of the list was 2018 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winner Ted Potter Jr. His 1,224 holes included 57 3-putts for a percentage of 4.66.

The PGA Tour has maintained the category since 1992, so we can see how players have fared since then. Perhaps surprisingly, only one player has a 3-Putt Avoidance percentage beneath one in any year. That man is Greg Norman , who achieved 0.97% in 1994. The Australian endured just 11 3-putts out of 1,134 holes that year. At the other end of the scale stands Matt Hansen’s 2006 record of 6.14% of holes ending in 3-putts – still an envious enough total for most amateurs, but far from a recipe for PGA Tour success.

The stats tell us something else, too – that after a long period where the yearly average didn’t fall beneath three percent, recent years have seen an improvement on the PGA Tour. After it averaged 2.99% in 1996, the number didn’t dip beneath three percent again until 2014, with 2007 and 2013 particularly poor putting years, with an average of 3.38% of holes leading to 3-putts. In contrast, the years 2019 through 2021 all averaged beneath three percent.

But what is the average 3-putt percentage since records began? Between 1992 and 2021, the average 3-putt percentage for PGA Pros is 3.02. So, on average, for every 100 holes played on the PGA Tour, just over three of them will result in 3-putts.

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Mike has over 25 years of experience in journalism, including writing on a range of sports throughout that time, such as golf, football and cricket. Now a freelance staff writer for Golf Monthly, he is dedicated to covering the game's most newsworthy stories. 

He has written hundreds of articles on the game, from features offering insights into how members of the public can play some of the world's most revered courses, to breaking news stories affecting everything from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to developmental Tours and the amateur game. 

Mike grew up in East Yorkshire and began his career in journalism in 1997. He then moved to London in 2003 as his career flourished, and nowadays resides in New Brunswick, Canada, where he and his wife raise their young family less than a mile from his local course. 

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Strokes Gained Explained – How To Stop Losing Strokes

Golfers love numbers.

We love to crunch every piece of information we can get our hands on. That’s why we…

• Wear golf GPS devices and use rangefinders to find exact distances. 
• Log our stats after rounds played into different apps like Shot Scope to track average strokes and performance over time.
• Buy launch monitors to track different data points in practice so we’re more prepared on the golf course.  

Which makes sense because the more you know your numbers, the better you can play golf. 

Numbers make things black and white. As Peter Drucker said,  “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”  

Luckily for golfers, there’s an endless amount of numbers to help you learn more about your golf game.

All in the hopes of getting better and seeing how many strokes you can drop off your score. One of the most important metrics in all of golf is  strokes gained .

Anytime you watch golf on TV, chances are that announcers are constantly talking about this metric. But I bet most golf fans watching have no clue what it actually means or how to use it to improve your own game. 

However, when you do learn this critical statistic, it can help you shoot lower scores. Plus, it can make golf more enjoyable to watch on TV and won’t feel like the announcers are speaking in a foreign language.

Keep reading to learn everything about strokes gained.

Strokes Gained Analysis – Why This Number Means So Much 

On any given shot, you want to know your numbers. Knowing exact numbers not only help in the game of golf but anything in life you want to improve. Think about it…

With weight, the more you measure your body, step on the scale, and track your body fat, the easier it is to make positive changes. To gain muscle, the more you track your workouts , reps, and sets, the easier it is to gain strength.

Golf is no different. 

The more you measure each component of your game, the easier it is to practice more efficiently. Which in turn, should lead to shooting lower scores as you turn your weaknesses into strengths. 

While numbers and data are super helpful, sometimes it’s a little overwhelming though. Especially when it comes to tracking your stats . Using apps and other methods we’ll outline in this post, you can have hundreds of data points from every round of golf.

Some of the more common golf stats include:

• Number of greens hit.
• Number of fairways hit.
• Total numbers of putts.
• Scrambling percentage.

While more advanced golf stats might include:

• Sand saves 
• Strokes gained 
• Scoring average
• Putting make rate 
• Proximity to the hole 
• Driving distance/accuracy

Of the endless sea of data, I would argue that  strokes gained  is arguably the most important metric of all. Here’s why… 

History and Definition of Strokes Gained 

Before diving into why strokes gained is such an important metric, let’s first define it. 

According to the  PGA Tour , 

“The strokes gained concept was initially developed by Professor Mark Broadie of Columbia University, utilizing ShotLink data that has been made available to academic institutions for research since 2007. 

Strokes gained is a better method for measuring performance because it compares a player’s performance to the rest of the field and because it can isolate individual aspects of the game. Traditional golf statistics, such as greens in regulation and putts per green, are influenced by a player’s performance on shots other than those being measured.”

Creator of Strokes Gained 

So who invented the strokes gained category?

Mark Broadie, who used his financial background to change the golf world forever. Now, the PGA Tour has endless data as Shotlink tracks every single shot these guys hit, which is great for a few reasons.

So, why does strokes gained matter so much? 

First, all this data lets see how the best players in the world perform. You can go onto the PGA Tour website at any given time to check out every stat imaginable. For specific events and total season numbers… It’s fascinating to see them! 

Second, this is great for amateurs because it gives up something to strive towards. I’ve found that a lot of times the everyday golfer thinks we should be better than we are. But when you look at some stats from the PGA Tour, even the best players in the world aren’t perfect… far from it.

For example, most everyday players think that PGA Tour players all bomb it off the tee. But the stats say otherwise. In the 2021 PGA Tour season, the average driving distance was 296 yards. 

Don’t get me wrong, nearly 300 yards is impressive, but that’s the average. A lot of players were well below that (with K.J. Choi being the shortest at 269 yards). 

Here are some other metrics that might surprise you from the 2021 PGA Tour season:

• 65% – Average GIR (green in regulation) 
• 29.01 – Average number of putts per round 
• 50% – Sand save percentage (this one is the most shocking to me) 

Read our article on Golf Statistics by Handicap to see what these numbers should be for your level.

Players use this data to work on certain parts of their games and strive to make improvements. While individual stats are important, strokes gained is the best measure of their overall performance. 

Strokes Gained Explained – Improving Your Golf Game

Strokes gained is the metric for success on the PGA Tour.

It compiles all kinds of data points to give players an idea of where things need to be improved. But as they have more data than ever, strokes gained are also changing. It’s not just one number, instead, it’s broken down into multiple categories including: 

Strokes Gained Total 

The first category for this stat ever was the total strokes gained.

As the PGA Tour said,  “Strokes gained: total simply compares a player’s score to the field average. For example, a player will gain three strokes on the field if he shoots 69 on a day when the field averages 72. A player who shoots 74 on that day loses two strokes to the field.”

In 2014, this number was broken down further into tee to green and putting. Since then, they’ve added additional data points, so the categories have expanded as well.  

Strokes Gained Tee to Green

So, what does strokes gained tee to green mean? 

Tee to green measures all shots that don’t happen on the putting green.

This includes each tee shot, approach shots, recovery shots, chips/pitches, and anything else off the dance floor. Basically, every shot that happens without a putter in your hand. 

Strokes Gained Driving (Off The Tee)

The strokes gained for “Off the tee” measures how a player performs on all par 4 and par 5 tee shots a given round.

Note : This does not factor in par 3’s as that is considered in our next statistic – approach to green. This is only tee box performance on par 4’s and par 5’s.

Strokes Gained Approach to Green 

While strokes gained off the tee is great to understand your long game better, approach the green helps understand your mid-game. This metric measures performance on your approach shots which include:

• Tee shots on par 3s
• Approach shots on par 4s
• Approach shots on par 5s 

For par 4s and 5s, things like fairway vs rough (or intermediate rough), how many shots it takes to get to the green, and more factors contribute to this statistical analysis.

Strokes Gained Around The Green (Scrambling) 

Next up is the around the green strokes gained number, which measures performance from 30 yards of the edge of the green. Basically, how well players scramble when they miss the green.

It’s important to note that this stat is specifically for around the green – not on the dance floor. 

This is a great metric to help you strengthen your short game and gain strokes around the green. When it comes to how you’re putting performance, that is the next and final statistic. 

Strokes Gained Putting

The final stat but definitely not least important is  strokes gained putting . Most strokes happen here and one of the reasons why short games are so vital to shooting lower scores.

As I’m sure you know, putting is arguably one of the most significant stats in golf. The better you roll it, the better your score. A three putt vs. a two putt vs. a one putt can make all the difference in a player’s game.

A scratch golfer tends to have fewer putts than most amateur golfers but more than a PGA Tour Pro (on average).

That’s why strokes gained putting is such a critical metric. This statistic measures how many strokes you gain or lose based on your putting performance. 

It clearly shows if you’re doing well with putting or if you need to change something up. 

The Formula for Strokes Gained Data

Now that you have a better understanding of the different categories, let’s get into the formula. This is the confusing part of the metric and luckily, not something you have to manually calculate.

There are tons of apps and programs that do the math for you. But here is a quick breakdown to give you the 30,000-foot view: 

• Strokes gained statistics starts by figuring out the average score of the hole to establish a baseline. For example, a hard par 4 might be 4.2 or 4.3 (over par), while an easy par 5 might be 4.8 (below par). 
• Then, after you hit your tee shot, more calculations come into play. Specifically, if you hit it in the fairway or rough and what your distance is to the green for your second shot. For example, if you have 100 yards into a par 4 vs. 180 yards, your SG will be lower the closer you are for your approach. Since the PGA Tour knows that the average player scores less the closer they are to the green and when playing from the fairway. 
• Once you hit your approach shot, more factors come into play. If you hit the green, your chances of making a 3 or 4 increase, thus, your strokes gained approach is better. If you miss the green, then scrambling and other factors come into play. 
• Finally, what you do on the putting green will be the final factor. How far or close you are not the hole plays a big role as the PGA Tour stats have shown, the closer you are, the more likely you are to make the putt. 

If you want to see the full calculations in an example from Rickie Fowler in the 2015 Players Championship,  click here . 

Strokes Gained App 

As you can tell, a lot goes into these calculations and isn’t simple math you can do on your own. You need the help of a golf app to do the hard work for you so you can reap the benefits. It might help you drop five strokes or really any strokes from your game!

If you’re interested in tracking more of your game to get strokes gained statistics, make sure to use one of these apps to get started. 

Shot Tracker V1 Game

Turn your phone into a stat tracking wizard with the Shot Tracker V1 game. It is a premium app that does require a subscription but most of them do. It’s worth every penny though as you get amazing insight into your game.

This app has an easy-to-use dashboard to see your results and analyze your game. You can also sync it up with your Apple Watch as well. 

Arccos Shot Tracking

Arccos is another shot tracking app that is very different from most apps. To get this device to work, you screw club tags into each grip so your phone can detect each shot. It uses GPS to track the club and location of each shot.

A lot of clubs actually come with them installed in the grip and a free 30-day trial as well. You can also upgrade to a belt clip and leave your phone in the golf cart.

Decades App (BirdieFire)

One statistic tracking program that I’ve been quite impressed with is the Decades App. It’s an impressive app that lets you track every part of your game imaginable. While it takes some time to enter your stats, it’s worth it. 

After picking your course and entering all your shots, it will give you an inside look at your performance. Specifically, look at the strokes gained categories:

As you can tell, it breaks SG into four categories and compares my numbers vs. PGA Tour average (you can change this setting inside the app). Overall, it makes it easy to see where I should focus most of my practice time and spot trends. 

This app has a learning curve at first but it’s well worth it. Luckily, there are tons of webinars and training videos inside the app to show you the best ways to use it and tons of other hacks to better golf. 

Go here to read all about our favorite golf apps.

Recommended Book: Every Shot Counts by Mark Broadie

Mark Broadie’s book called “Every Shot Counts” is another great book for most golfers to learn this important stat. This book provides an in-depth look on why this stat matters and how to help understand it for lower scores. 

What’s fascinating about Mark Broadie is his background. He worked in the financial world for quite some time and learned the importance of analytics and applied them to golf. He crunched endless amounts of data from professionals and amateurs alike to help players improve. 

It’s a fascinating read and provides great insight into what makes great players great. Make every shot count by reading this book sooner rather than later. 

Click here to learn more about it on Amazon now.

FAQs About Strokes Gained Statistics

Do you have more questions about this important metric in order to better understand and implement it in your game? If so, we have answers to your FAQs below. 

What does it mean strokes gained?

It’s a metric to gauge a player’s performance when compared to other players using a set of data points. It measures tons of different data points in order to give out a specific score and in multiple categories. 

How are strokes gained calculated?

The strokes gained calculation isn’t something you can do on your own. It takes a ton of different factors into consideration such as hole length, lie type, shot length, and more.  

Plus, strokes gained are now divided up into multiple parts of your game to better understand each component. While there is a total score, using apps and other programs like Decades Golf or Shot Scope, you can get individual parts too.

For example, when you enter in your stats and shots for a round into Decades Golf, you get strokes gained for off the tee, approach to the green, around the green, and putting. Having separate numbers for each section makes it easier to figure out your weakness and spend more time practicing them. 

Are strokes gained good?  

Yes, it’s a great metric as it measures overall performance and individual components as well. It’s much better than just looking at stats such as fairways, greens, or total putts. 

This is why I started using different stat tracking apps to get the most out of my game. For example, after tournament rounds, I enter all my stats into Decades to track my data. This software does all the heavy lifting and makes it easy to see where to improve and what to work on in practice.

What is bogey avoidance?

When you use advanced stat tracking apps, you get an incredible amount of data including ones like this. Bogey avoidance is the measure of percentage of time a player makes a bogey on a hole (or worse).

Are negative strokes gained good?

No, strokes gained are always positive or negative.

A positive number means that you were above average for total or a specific category. While a negative number means you were below average and thus, worse than the benchmark. 

Final Thoughts on Strokes Gained 

Learning strokes gained can absolutely help your golf game.

Even if you drop one stroke, it’s worth tracking each golf shot during a round. Of course, it only works if you actually use the right apps and track strokes gained data over time. 

But it’s important to not get so obsessed with the numbers that it does the exact opposite and ends up hurting your game. Knowing these numbers will make watching golf more enjoyable and will help you learn where to practice.

All I ask is that you don’t let it consume you like changing your swing and end up making things worse. Track your stats, use some of the apps mentioned above, and have fun on the golf course.

If you want to lower your handicap, make sure to enter your rounds regularly, study strokes gained stats (specifically short game), and then practice improving the weak areas of your game. 

Remember, the numbers don’t lie, especially strokes gained!  

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Pro golf stats to help manage your expectations.

Amateur golfers are a rather self-critical bunch. We judge, criticise and generally give ourselves a harder time than we should during a round. We set standards that can be both a curse and a blessing. Unfortunately, many of us set those standards too high. When we fall short, we unleash our inner critic.

So how do you take the edge off your self-flagellation? Let's try a bit of a reality check as a start point.

We recently gathered together some interesting stats from the professional game to provide some comparisons with amateur golfers. Some of them are pretty mind-blowing to us.

What you tend to see on TV is the best in the world playing at their best. Rarely do we see the guys grinding to make the cut or propping up the leaderboard. The play you see from the leaders is the equivalent of watching a highlight reel in any other sport. Golf is so competitive at the top and the margins so narrow that winners often have to be playing the best they've EVER played consistently for four days.

In reality, the average professional golfer's level of play isn't as dialled in as the coverage might suggest.

What do PGA Tour averages look like?

Take putting as an early example. You might feel that you should make more short putts than you miss. After all, the pros make it look so easy. Well, not quite. Statistics have shown that PGA Tour players miss 50% of their putts from 8 feet.

What about driving performance? PGA tour players hit around 60% of fairways (60.72% to be exact) on average with their driver. And while they're likely bombing it further than most of us, this should demonstrate that missing a few fairways per round isn't going to completely derail your quest for a good score.

Hitting more than 50% of fairways has been long considered a good target for amateur golfers.

How about a comparison with Tiger Woods? You might have heard of him. He's pretty good at golf. With 15 major titles to his name, you might expect he would hit almost every green with a wedge in hand.

Actually, he doesn't. Even Tiger misses the green 20% of the time from 100-110 yards out.

That's right. Arguably the best golfer ever misses the putting surface one in five times from 'green light territory'. Keep that in mind the next time you miss the green from the short stuff. OK, your success rate might be far lower, but remember... it's Tiger Woods!

Approaching the green

Let's nudge our way towards the hole. How do the pros fare from a further 20 yards closer?

PGA Tour golfers aren't landing as tight to the pin as you might think. From 80-yards in the fairway, 21% of their shots end up 25-feet or more from the hole. Flipping the stat on its head a little, from a similar distance - 60-80 yards in the fairway - PGA Tour players hit it inside eight feet just 25.4% of the time.

If you're a mid-low handicapper beating yourself up when you fail to leave a 'makeable' putt, those two stats should provide a little perspective.

As far as short pitch shots go, we all expect to find the putting surface when we're right up within throwing distance of the green. But should we be as hard on ourselves if we miss from close range?

Perhaps not. When PGA Tour players find themselves in the rough 25 yards from the green, it's not a certainty that they'll have a putter in hand for their next shot.

The pros miss the green (and fringe) 14% of the time - from 25 yards. Now think of the last time you landed short or long of the green from the same distance. You probably gave yourself a right verbal lashing.

The difference-maker

A typical PGA Tour player averages 3.4 more birdies per round than a 20-handicap. So, while the pros are easily around 30+ shots better than a 20 handicapper per round, they average less than four birdies more per round. So what does that tell us?

If you want to score better, let's reduce bogeys, doubles, and worse.

Double bogey avoidance, in particular, is one of the keys to a good round - and your overall golf improvement. For most golfers, if you've managed 18 holes with no double bogeys, you can happily reflect on a pretty solid round over your post-round pint on the 19th hole.

What do the stats say?

As you will expect, both Tour level (0.3 per round) and scratch golfers (0.7 per round) have the art of double bogey avoidance down to a tee. So there's not too much of a difference between those two groups. But what about mid-high handicappers?

A 10-handicapper is averaging three doubles per round. Of course, with each double being a pair of strokes each time, that's six shots added to their score to par on just three holes every round.

A 20-handicapper makes 6.5 doubles on average.

To improve your handicap, you need to lower the number of holes you walk off after carding a double bogey or worse. They're never going to be completely unavoidable, but you can make plenty of changes to your game to stop wasting shots unnecessarily.

As a good starting point - we're talking reliable clubs off the tee. We're also talking fewer short-game mistakes . Get your lag putting nailed down, improve your course management and develop your mental game too.

You see, even the best in the business are missing more fairways, greens and putts than many of us ever thought was the case. Hopefully, this dash of perspective can help us all accept the rough with the smooth during our next round.

Golf's a far more enjoyable game when we learn to give ourselves a break once in a while.

If you enjoyed our golf stats reality check, take a look at our recent story to help you prepare for your next golf trip. You can read it here .

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PGA Championship analysis: 10 notes to know on Hovland, Scheffler and more

The 105th PGA Championship got back on schedule Friday after frost prevented the entire field from finishing the opening round Thursday. Oak Hill has lived up to the pre-tournament hype, with the field combining for a score of 1,014 strokes over par — the most at the PGA Championship in 11 years. Three of the world’s best ball strikers are tied at the top entering the weekend, with 25 more within six shots of the lead.

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Here are the top notes and numbers to know from the second round of the PGA Championship.

1. Scottie Scheffler’s presence near the top of the leaderboard feels inevitable these days. A second-round 68 has the world No. 2 tied for the lead , the second time he’s carried a 36-hole lead or co-lead at a major. The other instance came in his victory at Augusta National 13 months ago. On a golf course that has yielded bogey or worse on 26.8 percent of holes played this week, the Tour’s leader in bogey avoidance has just two dropped shots through two rounds.

Scheffler is 53 under par in the majors since the beginning of 2020, 18 strokes better than any other player in that span. With a win this week, Scheffler would become just the second man to win The Players Championship and the PGA Championship in the same season, joining Hal Sutton in 1983.

Four birdies helped Scottie Scheffler go low at Oak Hill. @ROLEX | #ROLEX pic.twitter.com/1imXnNvbS3 — PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 19, 2023

2. Like Scheffler, Corey Conners opened this week with scores of 67-68 and sits tied for the lead through two rounds. Conners is the first Canadian player to hold the 36-hole lead in any major since Mike Weir at the 2003 Masters . Weir’s win that week is the only men’s major championship victory by a Canadian.

Always lauded for his elite ball striking, Conners has flipped the script this week, gaining nearly as many strokes on the field with his putter (+5.05) as he has with his performance off the tee and on approach (+5.90). Since the beginning of 2022, Conners is putting better in the major championships than in regular Tour events, to the tune of about 0.40 strokes per round. He’s ranked fifth in the field in strokes gained putting through two days at Oak Hill.

There are an array of statistical similarities when comparing Conners to where Jason Dufner was in 2013 when he won the PGA at Oak Hill. In 2013, Dufner was a two-time PGA Tour winner, ranked 21st in the world, was coming off a top-10 finish in his previous start and ranked in the top 25 that season in both strokes gained approach and greens in regulation. Conners? He’s a two-time PGA Tour winner, ranked 29th in the world, finished in the top 10 in his last start and is also in the top 25 in both of those stats in 2023.

3. Viktor Hovland completes the trio at five-under after a brilliant 67 on Friday. Hovland has been a well-oiled machine with his irons this week, leading the field in strokes gained approach, average proximity to the hole and strokes gained tee-to-green. Through two days, the field has an average proximity from the fairway of 33 feet, 1 inch. Hovland is nearly 10 feet better per shot (23 feet, 2 inches).

Hovland is really starting to figure out this major championship thing. In his first nine major starts as a pro, Hovland was 20 over par, carding six total rounds in the 60s. In his last 10 major rounds, he’s 25 under par and has the same amount of sub-70 scores. Hovland’s maligned game around the greens is even picking up: Through two rounds, he’s scrambling at a clip of 70.0 percent, more than 20 percent higher than the field average.

4. The prevailing thought entering this PGA Championship was that the players to go off early Thursday would be at a weather-based disadvantage, facing forecasted chilly temperatures. The opposite happened: Of the nine players under par entering the weekend, seven were in the early/late wave. Players who went out late/early had an average 36-hole total score 1.2 strokes higher than their counterparts on the other side of the draw. The combined differential in score to par between the two waves was 92 shots (+553 to +461).

5. The best story of the week so far is Michael Block , the head professional at the public Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, Calif. Block is tied for 10th place through two rounds, the first time a club pro has been in the top 10 through 36 holes at the PGA Championship since 1988. Block played in the more difficult late/early tee time wave; only two players from that group of times had a better score than Block entering the weekend.

Block has serious game: He’s third in the field in approach shot proximity this week, hitting it 11 feet closer than the field average. He’s eighth in strokes gained off the tee, sandwiched between Tommy Fleetwood and Adam Scott in that statistic. A club pro has not finished in the top 20 at the PGA Championship since 1990.

6. Justin Rose is under par entering the weekend, despite his performance off the tee doing everything possible to prevent that from being true. Rose has hit just seven fairways through two rounds, tied for the fewest of any player to make the cut. Rose is just the third player in the last 20 years to be under par through two rounds of a major while hitting seven or fewer fairways and the first to do it since Mark Hensby at the 2005 U.S. Open.

Rose won the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, his lone major championship victory. Since the beginning of 2014, he’s finished in the top 10 in majors 11 times, most of any player without a major win in that span. Now 42 years old, Rose has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance this season with his on-course performance, jumping from 55th in strokes gained total last season to inside the top 20 so far in 2023. Should Rose win this weekend, both he and Matt Fitzpatrick would be reigning major champions. There have not been two different English men’s reigning major winners at the same time since 1923-24 (Arthur Havers and Cyril Walker).

7. The 503-yard, par-4 sixth hole was an absolute brute Friday. There were 25 more balls in the water (28) than birdies (three). A scant 29 percent of this elite field found the green with their second shot. At 0.75 strokes over par, it played as the most difficult hole in relation to par in any single round at the PGA Championship since 2000. A whopping 27 players made double bogey or worse at the sixth in Round 2.

Through two days, the field is 180 strokes over par on the sixth hole at Oak Hill, 56 shots higher than any other hole.

8. Through 27 holes this week, Major Championship Brooks Koepka™ had yet to arrive at Oak Hill. When he made the turn Friday, he had just one birdie, was losing strokes to the field on the greens and was closer to the cut line than the lead. That all changed in his closing nine holes: Koepka hit four approach shots inside 13 feet, made five birdies and propelled himself into contention entering the weekend.

Friday’s round was the 16th time Koepka has shot 66 or better in a major championship since 2014, tied with Jordan Spieth for most of any player. His reward is a third-round grouping with one-time sparring partner and fellow LIV player Bryson DeChambeau , who is two back entering Round 3. This will be the second time the pair is grouped together in a major, with the other instance coming in the final round of the 2016 Masters.

9. USC product and former No. 1 amateur in the world Justin Suh is two shots off the lead in his PGA Championship debut. Suh has just two bogeys this week, tied with Scheffler for the fewest in the field. Suh will play the first weekend at a major championship round of his career Saturday alongside Hovland — the man who took that No. 1 amateur ranking away from him in 2019.

It’s safe to say that 32-year-old Englishman Callum Tarren wasn’t on anyone’s radar entering this week. In Tarren’s last nine stroke play events, he made only one cut and was a combined 41 strokes over par. Oak Hill is a hell of a place to find your game: After a second-round 67, Tarren is just three shots off the pace through 36 holes. Tarren is ranked 160th on the PGA Tour this season in strokes gained tee-to-green per round. This week, he’s ranked eighth.

10. There have been six previous men’s major championships held at Oak Hill. All six of the winners were T3 or better through 36 holes, with nobody coming from more than two shots back to win. For a less concentrated historic sample: 34 of the last 37 major winners in the men’s game were in the top 10 after Round 2. Since 1990, 87.9 percent of major champions were at or within four strokes of the lead entering Round 3.

(Top photo of Viktor Hovland: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

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Justin Ray is a contributor at The Athletic and the Head of Content for Twenty First Group, a sports intelligence agency that works with players, broadcasters, manufacturers and media. He has been in sports media for more than 10 years and was previously a senior researcher for ESPN and Golf Channel. Follow Justin on Twitter @ JustinRayGolf

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Avoiding the Agony of a ‘Bogey’: Loss Aversion in Golf — and Business

November 11, 2009 • 9 min read.

Tiger Woods and other golf superstars who stand to win millions on inch-long putts apparently are subject to the same fear and aversion to risk that can afflict investors and managers. According to new research by two Wharton faculty members, even the best golfers systematically miss the opportunity to score a "birdie" -- when a player sinks a ball in one stroke less than the number of expected strokes for a given hole -- out of fear of having a "bogey" -- or taking one stroke more than what is expected. Playing it safe, however, has its own costs -- in golf and in business, the researchers say.

Tiger Woods and other golf superstars who stand to win millions on inch-long putts apparently are subject to the same fear and aversion to risk that can afflict investors and managers. Taking the safe route, however, has its own costs, according to new Wharton research.

In a working paper titled, “ Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes,”  (PDF)  Wharton operations and information management professors Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer examine putts during pro golf tournaments and determine that even the best golfers systematically miss the opportunity to score a “birdie” — when a player sinks a ball in one stroke less than the number of expected strokes for a given hole — out of fear of having a “bogey” — or taking one stroke more than what is expected. According to the researchers, for many, the agony of a bogey seems to outweigh the thrill of a birdie.

The researchers calculate that this type of decision-making bias costs the average professional golfer about one stroke during a 72-hole tournament. For the top 20 golfers, that translates to a combined loss of about $1.2 million in prize money a year. According to the paper, golfers frame their approach to putting based on the risk of coming in worse than “par” — or the number of strokes a professional golfer would be expected to take to complete a given hole. The researchers’ analysis shows that golfers avoid the possibility of loss by playing conservatively when they have the opportunity to do better than par, but will try harder if they are at risk of coming in worse than par.

Pope says that the study explores “loss aversion” — a bias in decision-making that is an important element in the growing field of behavioral economics, which explores how human psychology impacts markets and business. “This research provides evidence that people work especially hard in order to avoid losses,” says Pope. In the current economy, he adds, “a lot of people … are very determined to get out of the loss domain and return to where they were a couple of years ago.”

The study’s findings challenge theories that suggest bias in decision-making does not persist in markets and that when biases exist, they tend to erode with competition, large stakes and experience. Where better to examine the theory than the competitive, high-payout world of the PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) Tour?

“The [study] demonstrates judgment biases in a high-stakes setting with experts,” says Schweitzer. “The bottom line is this: If Tiger Woods is biased when he plays golf, what hope do the rest of us have?”

The Dreaded Square

Many people assume that experts and professionals don’t show biases in a specialized area to the degree that a person without experience in that subject would exhibit, Pope says. “People assume CEOs have less biases than their employees and yes, that’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean CEOs don’t have biases as well.”

The researchers based their analysis on a rich dataset compiled by the PGA. Each year, the association’s tour is made up of 40 to 50 individual tournaments in which about 150 golfers compete. The four-day tournaments paid out, on average, a total of approximately $5 million in 2008. The top two-thirds of tournament players share in the purse, with the winner typically receiving 18%.

The data was compiled by approximately 250 workers hired by the PGA to gather detailed information about tournament play. To get the data, the tour mounts lasers around each hole of a course to measure and record within an inch the coordinates of each ball after every shot. Pope and Schweitzer used data from 239 tournaments between 2004 and 2009, concentrating on 2.5 million putts attempted by 421 professional golfers who each made at least 1,000 putts.

To focus on the issue of loss aversion, the researchers examined the putts in the context of the par set for each hole. According to the researchers, the par number creates a reference point that clearly distinguishes a loss from a gain. On their scorecards, golfers circle holes they score under par. If they shoot over par, the score is framed in a dreaded square. “Though golfers should only care about their overall tournament score, golfers may be influenced by the salient, but normatively irrelevant, reference point of par when they attempt putts,” the authors write.

Most of the putts in the data were for par (47%) or birdie (39.8%). The approach to each hole taken by golfers, relative to par, provides a way to measure loss aversion. Pope and Schweitzer used the PGA data to determine whether a golfer was playing it safe by making a putt that would end up just in front of the hole, in order to set up a sure next shot. Using data measuring the force of a stroke and position of a ball before the putt, the researchers determined that, on average, golfers make their birdie putts approximately two percentage points less often than they make comparable par putts. “This finding is consistent with loss aversion; players invest more focus when putting for par to avoid encoding a loss,” the researchers write.

Schweitzer notes that the behavior reflects the bias toward avoiding loss — in this case, missing par and scoring a bogey — over the potential to score more in the overall tournament, which is what ultimately matters. “Loss aversion is the systematic mistake of segregating gains and losses — evaluating decisions in isolation rather than in the aggregate — and over-weighting losses relative to gains,” he says.

In a business context, par might be equated to quarterly earnings or investors’ approach to selling or holding on to stocks depending on how much they paid for the shares initially. “In golf, players evaluate their performance on individual holes rather than focusing on their overall performance,” Schweitzer says. “In business, people look at performance in a particular quarter, how a specific stock has performed or how a particular account has performed. People make mistakes when they view related decisions independently.”

Pope and Schweitzer note that their research results are in line with Prospect Theory, an important concept in economics which was developed by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. Prospect Theory predicts that people become more risk averse when they are recording gains than when at risk of suffering a loss. Consistent with Prospect Theory, “[if] professional golfers use par as a reference point, they should be more cautious when putting for birdie (in the gain domain for a specific hole) than when putting for par. Specifically, conditional on missing a putt, we find that golfers hit birdie putts less hard than they hit par putts and are more likely to leave birdie putts short of the hole than par putts…. [We] demonstrate that players sacrifice success when putting for birdie to avoid difficult follow-up putts.” Moreover, this pattern of behavior “decreases expected profits” for the golfers, the paper concludes.

Overconfidence and Nervousness

Pope and Schweitzer attempted to head off challenges to their work by controlling for numerous factors. In their analysis, they control for the ball’s position on the green, whether the player is better with a driver than with a putter, whether experience on a particular green changes behavior, and differences between holes.

They also ruled out psychological explanations, including overconfidence and nervousness. To test for overconfidence, the researchers questioned whether after hitting a well-placed shot, golfers become “overconfident or cocky in a way that harms their performance on their next shot.” However, the data shows that when golfers score one stroke less on a hole relative to average performance, they are likely to score fewer strokes than average performance on the next hole. “Absent a story of loss aversion,” the authors write, “overconfidence or cockiness cannot account for our findings.”

As for nervousness, the paper posits the idea that golfers value a birdie putt more than they value shooting par, and that they might become nervous and “choke” when aiming for a birdie. The research found that although amateur golfers infrequently take birdie putts, professional golfers attempt nearly as many birdie putts as they do for par. Even when a successful birdie or par putt would place golfers in a similar position, they are still more likely to make the otherwise identical putt if it is for par.

The notion that nervousness plays a role is also inconsistent with other results. “First,” the paper states, “players hit their birdie putts shorter than they hit otherwise similar par putts. Second, we demonstrate that even the best golfers, including Tiger Woods, exhibit this bias in early rounds of tournaments. Third, the difference between par and birdie putts diminishes across rounds. Nervousness cannot explain these findings.”

Finally, in addition to the quantitative analysis, the authors cite anecdotal evidence from Woods himself. After playing a round in 2007, the PGA’s most winning active player said: “Any time you make big par putts, I think it’s more important to make those than birdie putts. You don’t ever want to drop a shot. The psychological difference between dropping a shot and making a birdie, I just think it’s bigger to make a par putt.”

The authors note that golf has been the subject of other recent economics research. According to Pope, he and Schweitzer were interested in exploring the subject because of the rich PGA dataset. The practice of recording par for each hole also provides a fixed reference point that does not change given varying circumstances, as might be the case in many other tests of economic theory.

While Pope does not golf at all and Schweitzer is only an occasional player, they say the subject is well-suited to their research goals. “It is a rich domain for studying individual decision making. We have data that measure the outcomes of hundreds of thousands of similar decisions that were made by talented, experienced and highly motivated individuals.”

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Opinion & Analysis

Five statistical shortcuts for lower scores.

One of the very first things I examine with the PGA Tour players I work with is their basic scoring metrics. Those metrics include the following:

• Adjusted Total Scoring Average
• Adjusted Par-3 Scoring Average
• Adjusted Par-4 Scoring Average
• Adjusted Par-5 Scoring Average
• Adjusted Bogey Rate
• Adjusted Birdie Rate

The term “adjusted” means that actual average is adjusted based on the difficulty of the courses they play.

It’s important that golfers understand these metrics at a fundamental level to improve, because that is what the game is about: shooting the lowest possible score you can. And if you can better determine what your strengths and weaknesses are from a pure scoring perspective, you can then start to reverse engineer what you need to work on in order to get better.

Here’s five scoring metrics and/or strategies that can help you get your handicap trending in the right direction.

No.1: Par 4 Scoring Average

The scoring average golfers have on par 4’s has the strongest correlation to their total scoring average. This is particularly true on the PGA Tour, because Tour players play roughly 11-to-12 par 4’s per round. The same holds true for the average amateur on an 18-hole championship course.

Par 4’s are the truest test of a player’s overall ability, however, that does not mean a good par-4 player cannot struggle in certain areas. Phil Mickelson has been a terrible driver of the ball historically, yet he plays par 4’s extremely well. Mickelson just happens to make up for it by being one of the best iron players in the world, arguably the greatest trouble-shot player of all time and generally a good putter with a great short game. Boo Weekley tends to be a good par-4 player as well, but he is one of the worst putters on Tour and has a mediocre short game. He just makes it up with incredible driving of the ball and good-to-great iron play.

In order to play the par 4’s better, I recommend working on what I call the four cornerstones of the game:

• Long approach shot play (175-to-225 yards for scratch or better golfers, 150-to-200 yards for other amateurs)
• Short Game (10-to-20 yards for less than 5-handicaps, 10-to-30 yards for 5+ handicaps with an emphasis on bunker shots)
• Putting (3-to-15 feet for less than 5-handicaps, 3-to-25 feet for 5+ handicaps)

If one can practice these areas and start to see improvement on the range, then they will very likely see a dramatic improvement in their play on the par 4’s. But, if their par-4 play is a problem, then it is very likely due to one of these issues.

No. 2: Bogey Rate

I list Bogey Rate second because it has the second strongest correlation to scoring average on Tour. The reason is that this stat includes all double, triple and quadruple bogeys. For all intents and purposes, the best somebody will do on a hole is make a birdie (eagles happen, but very rarely). Theoretically, however, a golfer can shoot an infinitely high score on each hole. And if a golfer makes a double bogey, they now need to make two birdies in order to break even. By then, they have already used up one-sixteenth of their round and are quickly running out of holes to make more birdies.

The other important facet to understand about bogeys is that they are often not related to a golfer’s short game. Instead, they are often related to a golfer’s ball striking ability. For example, even if a golfer is a terrible putter, if he leaves himself a 20-foot putt for birdie on every hole he’s not likely to three-putt that often. He may not make many birdies, but he is not going to make many bogeys either. That is why Hogan was such a great player even when he had the putting yips; he still hit the ball close to the cup repeatedly, and even his putting would not yield many bogeys.

I even came up with a game in 2013 Pro Golf Synopsis to help promote getting the ball closer to the hole called the “15/5 Score.” Here is how I recommend 10 handicaps or better to play it:

• 2 points for every birdie opportunity (putt or chip) inside 15 feet.
• 1 point for every par putt inside 5 feet.
• -3 points if the par putt is not inside 5 feet.
• +3 points for eagle putts inside 15 feet.

For golfers above with a handicap of 10 or higher, I would just go 1-stroke higher:

• 2 points for every par opportunity (putt or chip) inside 15 feet.
• 1 point for every bogey putt inside 5 feet.
• -3 points if the bogey putt is not inside 5 feet.
• +3 points for birdie putts inside 15 feet.

The golfer can only record one score per hole, so if a 4 handicap has a 12-foot birdie putt and leaves it to 2 feet, he or she can only record 2 points for the birdie opportunity inside 15 feet.

I admit that there are golfers who have high bogey rates because of their short game and putting. It’s just that poor ball striking tends to cause more bogeys than most golfers would believe. For those golfers who struggle with making bogeys because of their short game and putting, I advise that they work on their short game shots from 10-to-20 yards and their putting from 3-to-5 feet. The goal should be to make 90 percent of their putts from 3-to-5 feet. Once that is accomplished, move on to making 5-to-10 foot putts.

No. 3: Par 5 Scoring Average

Par-5 performance is greatly influenced by the distance golfers have off the tee and their club head speed. We see a strong correlation between par-5 performance and the “go for it” rate on Tour. According to PGATour.com, a player is assumed to be going for the green if the second shot lands on or around the green or in the water. “Around the green” indicates the ball is within 30 yards of the edge of the green.

Take note that it counts as “going for it” any time a golfer hits their second shot within 30 yards of the edge of the green. So, a player could have a 300-yard shot to the hole and only be able to hit their 3 wood 250 yards, but it can still be considered a “go for it” if the ball is within 30 yards of the front edge of the green.

Obviously, golfers want to make sure it is feasible to attempt to reach a par 5 in two shots. If the shot requires the ball to fly over water that you’re not likely to carry, there’s no reason to go for it. On the other hand, I see a lot of amateurs and even Tour players lay up to a specific yardage when there is no real trouble instead of hitting their 3 wood as close to the hole as they can. Typically, this is a poor strategy.

All golfers, including Tour players, hit shots closer to the hole on average if the have a shorter shot; provided that the shot is from the same type of lie (fairway vs. fairway, rough vs. rough, sand vs. sand, etc). The idea of getting laying up to a golfer’s favorite yardage is faulty, because while a golfer may be able to stick it close frequently from a specific yardage, their variance in how close they can hit it to the hole becomes greater than if they were, say, 30 yards closer to the hole.

I have tracked numerous Tour players using ShotTracker and experimented with a few friends of mine that are amateurs. What we typically see is that a golfer’s money yardage is often not as money as they think it is.

The best case scenarios happen with Tour players. They will hit shots from their money yardage inside 5 feet, say, 20 percent of the time. And from 30 yards closer, they may only hit it inside 5 feet only 15 percent of the time. The real killer is not their good shots, however, but the deviation in all their shots. The money yardage will provide a greater variance in results than a shot that’s 30 yards closer to the hole. For every two times they hit it inside 5 feet from their money yardage, they may miss the green completely from that distance.

So, what we tend to see on Tour is that the longest hitters with high club head speeds tend to perform best on the par-5’s because they are playing them more like par 4’s. The good par-5 players that do not hit it long off the tee like Webb Simpson, Kevin Na and Matt Kuchar tend to be very aggressive in going for the par-5’s that they can go for and are good performers from 75-to-125 yards when they have to lay-up.

There is one very important caveat to this, however. Playing par 5’s well is mostly about being able to advance your second shot as close to the hole as possible. Most golfers get on a par 5 and are trying to bomb it off the tee to leave themselves with less club into the hole. The better par-5 players, on the other hand, often hit their “stock swing” driver and focus on making good contact and finding the fairway. That’s because even Tour players do not like hitting 3 woods out of the rough, and more often than not they will lay up if they are in the rough. The golden rule I stress to golfers is that any time your second shot is likely to be a 5-iron or longer, take your stock driver swing and focus on making good contact and finding the fairway. This applies for both par 5’s and long par 4’s.

No. 4: Birdie Rate

Birdie Rate is often tied in with Par-5 performance because golfers birdie par 5’s almost three times more than they birdie par 4’s and almost four times more than they birdie par 3’s.

There are some Tour players that generate a lot of birdies, but do not play the par 5’s that well. Those players are usually good at one of or both of these areas:

• Shots from 125-to-175 yards
• Making putts outside of 15 feet

Typical amateurs who makes a lot of birdies but do not play par-5’s well will likely be performing very well from 100-to-150 yards.

Making putts outside 15-feet is a very fleeting metric. Even the best putters on Tour have a very inconsistent percentage of putts made from outside 15 feet. Typically, making putts outside 15 feet will move towards the mean. So the golfer that is making a lot of birdies because they are putting great outside 15 feet will eventually see that cease, because that make percentage is going to regress over time.

No. 5: Par 3 Scoring Average

Par-3 performance is:

• 1-part iron play
• 1-part short game play
• 1-part putting outside 20 feet

Typically, if a Tour player performs at least two of these parts well they will perform better than average on par 3’s. Par-3 performance is also a bit fleeting because one part of it relies on making putts that are longer than 20 feet, which you now know is a fleeting metric.

Recent research that I have conducted shows that between the frequency of shots and shot performance, bunker play accounts for 50-to-55 percent of a Tour player’s short game performance. For amateurs with a 5 handicap or greater, it accounts for 75-to-80 percent of their short game performance. That’s why most amateurs should concentrate on their bunker play to improve their scoring average. And they could greatly help themselves by avoiding those bunkers in front of the green, where I found that Tour players hit their shots an average of 38 percent farther away from the cup that shots from the bunkers to the side of the green or in back of the green.

I hope this information allows golfers to better understand scoring, what to practice and how to generate a better strategy to improve their score. Good luck!

Which major crowns golf’s greatest champions?

Kate Upton is upset and misinformed about golf and that’s great

Richie Hunt is a statistician whose clients include PGA Tour players, their caddies and instructors in order to more accurately assess their games. He is also the author of the recently published e-book, 2018 Pro Golf Synopsis; the Moneyball Approach to the Game of Golf. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Richie3Jack. GolfWRX Writer of the Month: March 2014 Purchase 2017 Pro Golf Synopsis E-book for $10

21 Comments

Jun 13, 2014 at 8:33 am

Good article Richie. For those who are dismissing it, take a closer look at your own game and evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Then refer back to the article to see where you may gain the most from an improvement. I’m sure your intuition and knowledge of your own game can point you to your weaknesses even if you don’t keep detailed stats.

This year I’m working on being more aggressive into Par 5s (even when I can’t get all the way there), pitching and bunker play, and also improving my putting in the 3-15 foot range. I can already see improvements.

Jun 9, 2014 at 11:44 am

You fail to put a score down for 15/5 Score in the bogey section as to what is good, average, bad.

Jun 9, 2014 at 11:29 am

Not a terrible article. I just don’t see it as very useful for many people. It’s too generic and focused on tour pros. I unfortunately do not have the game of a tour pro so in all likelihood these statistical trends you note based on tour pro data are not very relevant to me. You mentioned research you’ve done with amateurs as well, but again, my game looks nothing like the “average amateur”. I have my strengths and weaknesses that are particular to me. What the average pro or average amateur does is interesting to a degree, but there is so much variance from golfer to golfer that I just don’t find that useful at all.

The same is true for individual touring pros. You can tell Tim Clark that there’s a great correlation between “go for it” rate on par 5’s and par 5 scoring average, and it means nothing to him. He has to play to his strengths just like everybody else does.

What I do find useful is tracking my own stats and digging into my own statistical patterns. There are some great new products out there that work with smartphones and can track all of your shots and provide you with all of this data for your individual game. Use one and do your own statistical analysis and you won’t need to pay any attention to what the average tour pro or average amateur needs to do to score better on par 4s or par 3s. You can know what YOU need to do to score better.

Jun 9, 2014 at 8:59 am

Richie … don’t lose heart. I dug the article. Some people will never get it. I also noticed that the haters certainly didn’t add any alternative information.

Keep on keepin on.

Jun 9, 2014 at 6:53 am

First of all I think it is a great article, thanks for that Richie!

Too all of you guys that makes fun of this article, stating it is to obvious, haven’t really read it properly or either you just don’t get it.. As Richie mentioned in an above comment it is an article that goes into understanding how to get better on the par-3’s par-4’s and par-5’s holes which some of you clearly did not understand! I have read Richie’s articles for the past 2 months and for the last month I have been training on some the aspects of the game he mentioned in this article.

My focus have been on going for the par 5’s every time I can. Improving my driving accuracy by swinging more controlled. Improving my long iron play. And lastly my putts from 1-6 feet.

That have made my handicap go from 3 to 1 in a month.

And yes I makes good sense to take statistic from your round to make things clearer, but every player should have an idea of where there game lacks! If you don’t just train “the four cornerstones of the game” and you golf will improve!

Jun 8, 2014 at 8:50 pm

I think this is a good article with a misleading title.

And really it only helps anyone who keeps stats.

It really does a good job of providing/identifying the 5 basic scoring metrics you need to analyze in order to identify some of the most influential strengths and weaknesses in your game.

Once you find your strengths and weaknesses based on these 5 metrics then you can analyze why exactly you score well/poorly in certain areas

Jun 8, 2014 at 7:37 am

Solid article. The hacks above didn’t really think about the logic: look at what you are performing poorly at and then address how to improve there.

This certainly made me think about what to work on. I am scratch trying to get to plus and win club championship.

My par 4 scoring is mediocre for my hdcp and I can see it is due to less than fair driver accuracy and weak long iron play.

My bogie rate is not good. This is certainly bc I excel at short game yet long iron ball striking in general is a weak stat. .

My par 5 scoring, relatively speaking, is weak and I can see how trying to crush it off the tee instead of a stock driver in the fairway has greatly affected my score. When thinking about it, although I hit it plus 300 yards, I’m usually in the rough. Last 5 rounds I only hit 46% of fairways.

Birdie rate is average and improving par 5 stat will get me there.

My best stat above is par3 scoring, which makes sense because I’m abnormally great long putter and putter in general and my short game far exceeds the rest of my game.

So my priorities are: Driver accuracy 175-225 shots

Jun 7, 2014 at 11:21 am

Putts inside three feet are good. 1 mulligan each 9. Maximum score on a hole is Double Bogey. Use a pencil with an eraser. Stop after 15 holes.

Jun 7, 2014 at 9:41 am

What to work on to score better… Drives iron play short game putting well now the game is just too easy!

Jun 7, 2014 at 9:40 am

So all I have to do is improve on the Par 3’s, 4’s and 5’s? Thanks for the tip.

Richie Hunt

Jun 7, 2014 at 11:15 pm

The article goes into *what goes into* improving on the par-3’s, par-4’s and par-5’s.

Jun 7, 2014 at 12:23 am

This article really put some groundbreaking information out there.

Scooter McGavin

Jun 6, 2014 at 7:10 pm

Soooo… Lower your scores by shooting more pars and birdies? If only somebody would have told me that sooner.

Jun 6, 2014 at 8:32 pm

Totally agreed…

I didnt know that i should have worked on driving, irons, short game and putting.

This article is such an eye opener!!!

Jun 6, 2014 at 8:58 pm

Scooter, that was funny….

Jun 6, 2014 at 7:01 pm

Statistics is so boring

Chris Steele

Jun 6, 2014 at 4:30 pm

I agree with Mike, All you’re really saying is hit better shots.

Jun 6, 2014 at 4:04 pm

Still such a cutie richie

Duncan Castles

Jun 6, 2014 at 2:18 pm

Another excellent and informative article, Rich. Thanks.

Jun 6, 2014 at 1:16 pm

So not really shortcuts…this whole article is more like “he’s how to score in golf” and essentially means shoot better, score better lol

But thanks, was good, just a tad misleading.

Jun 6, 2014 at 2:29 pm

We had difficulty coming up with a good title. That certainly is not one of my strengths.

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Instruction, the wedge guy: the easiest-to-learn golf basic.

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply.  Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean.  Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

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Vincenzi’s 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open betting preview

As the Florida swing comes to an end, the PGA Tour makes its way to Houston to play the Texas Children’s Houston Open at Memorial Park Golf Course.

This will be the fourth year that Memorial Park Golf Course will serve as the tournament host. The event did not take place in 2023, but the course hosted the event in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Memorial Park is a par-70 layout measuring 7,432 yards and features Bermudagrass greens. Historically, the main defense for the course has been thick rough along the fairways and tightly mown runoff areas around the greens. Memorial Park has a unique setup that features three Par 5’s and five Par 3’s.

The field will consist of 132 players, with the top 65 and ties making the cut. There are some big names making the trip to Houston, including Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Tony Finau, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala.

Past Winners at Memorial Park

• 2022: Tony Finau (-16)
• 2021: Jason Kokrak (-10)
• 2020: Carlos Ortiz (-13)

In this article and going forward, I’ll be using the  Rabbit Hole  by  Betsperts Golf  data engine to develop my custom model. If you want to build your own model or check out all of the detailed stats, you can sign up using promo code: MATTVIN for 25% off any subscription package (yearly is best value). 

Key Stats For Memorial Park

Let’s take a look at several metrics for Memorial Park to determine which golfers boast top marks in each category over their last 24 rounds:

Strokes Gained: Approach

Memorial Park is a pretty tough golf course. Golfers are penalized for missing greens and face some difficult up and downs to save par. Approach will be key.

Total Strokes Gained: Approach per round in past 24 rounds:

• Tom Hoge  (+1.30)
• Scottie Scheffler  (+1.26)
• Keith Mitchell  (+0.97) 
• Tony Finau  (+0.92)
• Jake Knapp  (+0.84)

Strokes Gained: Off the Tee

Memorial Park is a long golf course with rough that can be penal. Therefore, a combination of distance and accuracy is the best metric.

Total Strokes Gained: Off the Tee per round in past 24 rounds:

• Scottie Scheffler  (+0.94)
• Kevin Dougherty  (+0.93)
• Cameron Champ  (+0.86)
• Rafael Campos (+0.84)
• Si Woo Kim  (+0.70)

Strokes Gained Putting: Bermudagrass + Fast

The Bermudagrass greens played fairly fast the past few years in Houston. Jason Kokrak gained 8.7 strokes putting on his way to victory in 2021 and Tony Finau gained in 7.8 in 2022.

Total Strokes Gained Putting (Bermudagrass) per round past 24 rounds (min. 8 rounds):

• Adam Svensson  (+1.27)
• Harry Hall  (+1.01)
• Martin Trainer  (+0.94)
• Taylor Montgomery (+0.88)
• S.H. Kim (+0.86)

Strokes Gained: Around the Green

With firm and undulating putting surfaces, holding the green on approach shots may prove to be a challenge. Memorial Park has many tightly mowed runoff areas, so golfers will have challenging up-and-down’s around the greens. Carlos Ortiz gained 5.7 strokes around the green on the way to victory in 2020.

Total Strokes Gained: Around the Green per round in past 24 rounds:

• Mackenzie Hughes  (+0.76)
• S.H. Kim  (+0.68)
• Scottie Scheffler  (+0.64)
• Jorge Campillo  (+0.62)
• Jason Day  (+0.60)

Strokes Gained: Long and Difficult

Memorial Park is a long and difficult golf course. This statistic will incorporate players who’ve had success on these types of tracks in the past. 

Total Strokes Gained: Long and Difficult in past 24 rounds:

• Scottie Scheffler  (+2.45)
• Ben Griffin  (+1.75)
• Will Zalatoris  (+1.73)
• Ben Taylor  (+1.53)
• Tony Finau  (+1.42)

Course History

Here are the players who have performed the most consistently at Memorial Park. 

Strokes Gained Total at Memorial Park past 12 rounds:

• Tyson Alexander  (+3.65)
• Ben Taylor  (+3.40)
• Tony Finau  (+2.37)
• Joel Dahmen  (+2.25)
• Patton Kizzire  (+2.16)

Statistical Model

Below, I’ve reported overall model rankings using a combination of the five key statistical categories previously discussed.

These rankings are comprised of SG: App (24%) SG: OTT (24%); SG: Putting Bermudagrass/Fast (13%); SG: Long and Difficult (13%); SG: ARG (13%) and Course History (13%)

• Scottie Scheffler
• Wyndham Clark
• Joel Dahmen
• Stephan Jaeger 
• Sahith Theegala
• Keith Mitchell 
• Jhonnatan Vegas
• Kurt Kitayama
• Will Zalatoris

2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open Picks

Will zalatoris +2000 (caesars).

Scottie Scheffler will undoubtedly be difficult to beat this week, so I’m starting my card with someone who I believe has the talent to beat him if he doesn’t have his best stuff.

Will Zalatoris missed the cut at the PLAYERS, but still managed to gain strokes on approach while doing so. In an unpredictable event with extreme variance, I don’t believe it would be wise to discount Zalatoris based on that performance. Prior to The PLAYERS, the 27-year-old finished T13, T2 and T4 in his previous three starts.

Zalatoris plays his best golf on long and difficult golf courses. In his past 24 rounds, he ranks 3rd in the category, but the eye test also tells a similar story. He’s contended at major championships and elevated events in the best of fields with tough scoring conditions.  The Texas resident should be a perfect fit at Memorial Park Golf Club.

Alex Noren +4500 (FanDuel)

Alex Noren has been quietly playing some of his best golf of the last half decade this season. The 41-year-old is coming off back-to-back top-20 finishes in Florida including a T9 at The PLAYERS in his most recent start.

In his past 24 rounds, Noren ranks 21st in the field in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, 30th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green, 25th in Strokes Gained: Total on long and difficult courses and 21st in Strokes Gained: Putting on fast Bermudagrass greens.

In addition to his strong recent play, the Swede also has played well at Memorial Park. In 2022, Noren finished T4 at the event, gaining 2.2 strokes off the tee and 7.0 strokes on approach for the week. In his two starts at the course, he’s gained an average of .6 strokes per round on the field, indicating he is comfortable on these greens.

Noren has been due for a win for what feels like an eternity, but Memorial Park may be the course that suits him well enough for him to finally get his elusive first PGA Tour victory.

Mackenzie Hughes +8000 ( FanDuel )

Mackenzie Hughes found himself deep into contention at last week’s Valspar Championship before faltering late and finishing in a tie for 3rd place. While he would have loved to win the event, it’s hard to see the performance as anything other than an overwhelming positive sign for the Canadian.

Hughes has played great golf at Memorial Park in the past. He finished T7 in 2020, T29 in 2021 and T16 in 2022. The course fit seems to be quite strong for Hughes. He’s added distance off the tee in the past year or and ranks 8th in the field for apex height, which will be a key factor when hitting into Memorial Park’s elevated greens with steep run-off areas.

In his past 24 rounds, Hughes is the best player in the field in Strokes Gained: Around the Greens. The ability to scramble at this course will be extremely important. I believe Hughes can build off of his strong finish last week and contend once again to cement himself as a President’s Cup consideration.

Akshay Bhatia +8000 ( FanDuel )

Akshay Bhatia played well last week at the Valspar and seemed to be in total control of his golf ball. He finished in a tie for 17th and shot an impressive -3 on a difficult Sunday. After struggling Thursday, Akshay shot 68-70-68 in his next three rounds.

Thus far, Bhatia has played better at easier courses, but his success at Copperhead may be due to his game maturing. The 22-year-old has enormous potential and the raw talent to be one of the best players in the world when he figures it all out.

Bhatia is a high upside play with superstar qualities and may just take the leap forward to the next stage of his career in the coming months.

Cameron Champ +12000 (FanDuel)

Cameron Champ is a player I often target in the outright betting market due to his “boom-or-bust” nature. It’s hard to think of a player in recent history with three PGA Tour wins who’s been as inconsistent as Champ has over the course of his career.

Despite the erratic play, Cam Champ simply knows how to win. He’s won in 2018, 2019 and 2021, so I feel he’s due for a win at some point this season. The former Texas A&M product should be comfortable in Texas and last week he showed us that his game is in a pretty decent spot.

Over his past 24 rounds, Champ ranks 3rd in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and 30th in Strokes Gained: Total on long and difficult courses. Given his ability to spike at any given time, Memorial Park is a good golf course to target Champ on at triple digit odds.

Robert MacIntyre +12000 (FanDuel)

The challenge this week is finding players who can possibly beat Scottie Scheffler while also not dumping an enormous amount of money into an event that has a player at the top that looks extremely dangerous. Enter McIntyre, who’s another boom-or-bust type player who has the ceiling to compete with anyone when his game is clicking on all cylinders.

In his past 24 rounds, MacIntyre ranks 16th in the field in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, 17th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green and 10th in Strokes Gained: Total on long and difficult courses.

MacIntyre’s PGA Tour season has gotten off to a slow start, but he finished T6 in Mexico, which is a course where players will hit driver on the majority of their tee shots, which is what we will see at Memorial Park. Texas can also get quite windy, which should suit MacIntyre. Last July, the Scot went toe to toe with Rory McIlroy at the Scottish Open before a narrow defeat. It would take a similar heroic effort to compete with Scheffler this year in Houston.

Ryan Moore +15000 (FanDuel)

Ryan Moore’s iron play has been absolutely unconscious over his past few starts. At The PLAYERS Championship in a loaded field, he gained 6.1 strokes on approach and last week at Copperhead, he gained 9.0 strokes on approach.

It’s been a rough handful of years on Tour for the 41-year-old, but he is still a five-time winner on the PGA Tour who’s young enough for a career resurgence. Moore has chronic deterioration in a costovertebral joint that connects the rib to the spine, but has been getting more consistent of late, which is hopefully a sign that he is getting healthy.

Veterans have been contending in 2024 and I believe taking a flier on a proven Tour play who’s shown signs of life is a wise move at Memorial Park.

Ryan: Why the race to get better at golf might be doing more harm than good

B.F. Skinner was one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century, developing the foundation of the development of reinforcement, and in doing so, creating the concept of behaviorism. In simple terms, this means that we are conditioned by our habits. In practical terms, it explains the divide between the few and far between elite instructors and college coaches.

To understand the application, let’s quickly review one of B.F. Skinner’s most important experiments; superstitions in the formation of behavior by pigeons. In this experiment, food was dispensed to pigeons at random intervals. Soon, according to Skinner, the pigeons began to associate whatever action they were doing at the time of the food being dispensed. According to Skinner, this conditioned that response and soon, they simply haphazardly repeated the action, failing to distinguish between cause and correlation (and in the meantime, looking really funny!).

Now, this is simply the best way to describe the actions of most every women’s college golf coach and too many instructors in America. They see something work, get positive feedback and then become conditioned to give the feedback, more and more, regardless of if it works (this is also why tips from your buddies never work!).

Go to a college event, particularly a women’s one, and you will see coaches running all over the place. Like the pigeons in the experiment, they have been conditioned into a codependent relationship with their players in which they believe their words and actions, can transform a round of golf. It is simply hilarious while being equally perturbing

In junior golf, it’s everywhere. Junior golf academies make a living selling parents that a hysterical coach and over-coaching are essential ingredients in your child’s success.

Let’s be clear, no one of any intellect has any real interest in golf — because it’s not that interesting. The people left, including most coaches and instructors, carve out a small fiefdom, usually on the corner of the range, where they use the illusion of competency to pray on people. In simple terms, they baffle people with the bullshit of pseudo-science that they can make you better, after just one more lesson.

The reality is that life is an impromptu game. The world of golf, business, and school have a message that the goal is being right. This, of course, is bad advice, being right in your own mind is easy, trying to push your ideas on others is hard. As a result, it is not surprising that the divorce rate among golf professionals and their instructors is 100 percent. The transfer rate among college players continues to soar, and too many courses have a guy peddling nefarious science to good people. In fact, we do at my course!

The question is, what impact does all this have on college-age and younger kids? At this point, we honestly don’t know. However, I am going to go out on a limb and say it isn’t good.

Soren Kierkegaard once quipped “I saw it for what it is, and I laughed.” The actions of most coaches and instructors in America are laughable. The problem is that I am not laughing because they are doing damage to kids, as well as driving good people away from this game.

The fact is that golfers don’t need more tips, secrets, or lessons. They need to be presented with a better understanding of the key elements of golf. With this understanding, they can then start to frame which information makes sense and what doesn’t. This will emancipate them and allow them to take charge of their own development.

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4 standout stats after 2 rounds at the PGA Championship

The PGA Championship's halfway point is officially here, with Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, and Corey Conners in a three-way tie atop the leaderboard.

The challenge presented by Oak Hill is fierce, as the cut is all the way back at 5-over and a number of big names will miss the weekend.

Here are four eye-catching stats from the opening 36 holes in Rochester.

Scheffler's bogey avoidance

Avoiding bogeys at major championships is often just as important as making birdies - especially on a treacherous course like Oak Hill. Scheffler is proving that theory to be very successful. The World No. 2 sits tied for the lead and has made only two bogeys through 36 holes.

On a course that is yielding bogey or worse 26.7% of the time so far this week, Scottie Scheffler has only 2 bogeys through 2 rounds. Only 1 player in the field currently has fewer this week - Justin Suh has only 1 bogey through 32 holes. — Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) May 19, 2023

Scheffler leads the PGA TOUR this season in bogey avoidance, with only 9% of his holes resulting in an over-par score. The six-time TOUR winner has gained strokes in every stat this week, so it's safe to expect few bogeys on his card this weekend.

Conners' hot putting

Conners has made a career on the PGA TOUR with elite ball-striking that ranks among the best in the world. The only thing that has kept the two-time winner from claiming more titles is his tendency to struggle on the greens. A quick look at his strokes gained stats over the last five seasons show just how big a discrepancy there is between those two portions of his game.

Through two rounds at Oak Hill, Conners is having one of his best weeks ever on the greens, currently sitting fifth in strokes gained: putting. Add that to his usual brilliance on ball-striking - he also sits ninth in the field in strokes gained: tee-to-green - and it's easy to see why the Canadian is tied for the lead.

McIlroy's ability to score despite driving issues

There's been no better driver in the world of golf over the past decade than Rory McIlroy. The World No. 3 has never finished outside the top 10 in strokes gained: driving in his PGA TOUR career, and he's leading the circuit in driving distance this season. So much of McIlroy's success on the golf course is predicated on his driving and ability to shorten holes to lengths other players can't. That's what makes his PGA Championship performance thus far equal parts puzzling and impressive. The four-time major champion has battled a two-way miss off the tee all week, sitting an outrageous 146th in driving accuracy with only 7-of-28 fairways hit.

With the rough at Oak Hill thick and penal, one would expect McIlroy to be crashing out with a missed cut due to his poor driving, but that's far from the case. Despite putting himself in some precarious positions, the 34-year-old is somehow even par for the championship and just five shots off the lead. If McIlroy can straighten his driving out on the weekend, a charge up the leaderboard is likely in the cards.

Koepka's finish to major rounds

Brooks Koepka's ability to raise his game in major championships has been well-documented over the past six years, with the Floridian grabbing four wins and countless other top finishes in those events. His talent for finishing rounds in clutch fashion is one of the reasons he's able to deliver. That was on full display Friday, with Koepka recording birdies on three of his final four holes as the rain began to fall to get to 2-under for the championship. With his close to Round 2, Koepka is now 6-under over the final four holes of his last six major rounds. After playing in the final group all weekend at Augusta National in April, Koepka finds himself just three back as he searches for his fifth career major title.

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Unleashing the Power of PGA Stats: PGAgolfbets’ Data-Driven Insights for Informed Decision-Making in Golf Betting and Fantasy Lineups

Elevate your PGA Tour experience with PGAgolfbets ! Explore our in-depth PGA stats analysis, providing a data-driven edge for betting and fantasy golf lineups. Navigate the intricate world of player performance with precision and confidence.

Embrace a new era of golf analysis with PGAgolfbets, where the strategic advantage of PGA stats takes center stage. Explore the precision and objectivity that comes with our comprehensive data-driven approach, providing you with the insights needed to make informed decisions in betting and fantasy golf lineups for upcoming PGA Tour events.

The Strategic Advantage of PGA Stats

At the core of our methodology lies the strategic advantage of incorporating PGA stats. We meticulously analyze Key Performance Statistics, delving into course setup intricacies and historical indicators from past winners. These vital statistics act as your compass, guiding you through the nuanced landscape of player performance.

Navigating Player Performance with Key Performance Statistics

Discover the intricacies of player performance as we break down the significance of Key Performance Statistics. From driving accuracy to putting proficiency, our analysis goes beyond the surface, offering you a comprehensive understanding of what truly influences success in the upcoming tournament.

Creating a Comprehensive Stats Analysis Table

A pivotal aspect of our methodology is the creation of a detailed Stats Analysis table for each participating player. By assigning numerical values based on Tour standings for key performance metrics and calculating a cumulative Total Score, we provide a quantitative measure of a player’s suitability for the specific PGA Tour event.

Understanding the Cumulative Total Score

The cumulative Total Score serves as a quick and insightful snapshot, allowing you to identify potential contenders aligned with the statistical trends identified by PGAgolfbets. This objective assessment minimizes reliance on subjective opinions, offering a more reliable foundation for decision-making.

Beyond Subjectivity: The Objectivity of Stats Analysis

Our Stats Analysis methodology goes beyond subjective opinions and gut feelings, offering you a robust foundation for decision-making. Say goodbye to uncertainty and embrace the objectivity that comes with a data-driven approach to understanding player performance.

PGA Tour Stats: A Crucial Component of Weekly Betting Tips

Beyond aiding decision-making, our Stats Analysis plays a crucial role in shaping the weekly golf betting tips on PGAgolfbets. It combines with historical results and current form assessments to become a powerful tool for making well-informed golf picks or fantasy golf selections.

Empowering Decision-Making with Data-Driven Insights

In essence, PGAgolfbets enhances your user experience by transforming the often subjective nature of golf predictions into a more objective, evidence-based approach through PGA Tour stats. Empower yourself with valuable insights, allowing you to navigate the complexities of PGA Tour events confidently.

Making Informed Picks: Historical Trends and Current Form

Combine historical results and current form assessments with our Stats Analysis for well-informed golf picks. Discover the synergy between past performances and present conditions, arming yourself with the knowledge needed to make choices that stand the test of the PGA Tour.

Enhancing User Experience: Confidence in PGA Tour Event Choices

In conclusion, PGAgolfbets is your gateway to an enhanced user experience, where confidence in PGA Tour event choices is our goal. Dive into the world of PGA stats with us and transform your approach to golf betting and fantasy lineups. Make choices grounded in statistical evidence and historical trends, unlocking a new level of confidence in your golf-related decisions.

RBC Heritage Stats Analysis

PGAgolfbets has identified the following Key Performance Statistics for this week’s RBC Heritage ;

Strokes Gained Tee To Green (SGT2G ) Strokes Gained Approach The Green (SGAPR ) Par 4 Scoring Average (Par 4 Sco ) Scrambling (Scr)

The table below is sorted for this week’s field based on an aggregate score of the above Key Performance Statistics . It is calculated by adding a player’s position on Tour for each statistic to get a cumulative Total Score . The results can be used in conjunction with the Event Form and Current Form to help make informed golf picks or fantasy golf selections .

NOTE: – the statistics used are accurate as at the completion of the 2024 US Masters. The table includes for PGA Tour Players only and excludes players who have not completed enough tournaments to get an accurate statistic.

Type a name in the Search Box to look at an individual player’s stats. Delete name from Search Box to revert to original table.

Use the Player Filter Button at the end of the player column to compare the stats of multiple players. Use the Clear Filters button to get back to original table.

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Understanding advanced golf stats

Bryson DeChambeau is one of longest hitters on the PGA Tour. (Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire)

April 13th, 2021

The game of golf is so intricate that no one statistic can predict a player’s probability of winning.

A big hitter, like Bryson DeChambeau, might seem like a solid bet on a long course like Augusta National. But if he struggles with his approach play and putting, he will tumble down the leaderboard, like he did last weekend at the Masters .

With about 130 official stats charted by the PGA Tour, the amount of data at a bettor's disposal can be an overwhelming blessing.

Luckily, not all statistics are created equal. Before you attempt to crunch all the numbers on the PGA Tour’s official site, make sure you know the meaning behind the data and which statistics to factor in with a particular course or tournament.

Below we break down 10 advanced golf stats and how to use them to your advantage when betting .

Total driving

Some golfers, like Dustin Johnson, bomb it off the tee and seek as much distance as possible on their first shot. Others, like Webb Simpson, aim for accuracy and a more precise landing spot on the fairway.

That time when Dustin Johnson hit a 369-yard drive to four feet for eagle. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/4MCgzRFX9G — Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) February 19, 2020

There are advantages to both approaches, depending on the course, but to best gauge a golfer’s overall driving abilities, look to total driving.

Total driving is fairly straightforward. It adds a player’s ranking in driving distance with their ranking in driving accuracy to get a total score.

For example, Scottie Scheffler currently ranks 28th in driving accuracy percentage — measured by the percentage of tee shots that come to rest in the fairway. In driving distance, which is calculated by the average number of yards per measured drive, Scheffler is tied for 31st on tour. Therefore, Scheffler's total driving score is 59 (28 + 31 = 59), which ranks first.

Strokes gained tee to green

Strokes gained statistics compare a player's performance to the rest of the field and are calculated using ShotLink data, the PGA Tour's real-time scoring system. 

Strokes gained tee to green measures all strokes a player takes, excluding those on the putting green

Strokes gained tee to green is a useful statistic for extremely difficult courses, like PGA National's Champion Course.

Strokes gained approaching the green

Generally considered one of the most important statistics in golf, strokes gained approaching the green measures quality of iron play. The stat places a value on strokes taken after the tee shot (on par 4s and par 5s), and up to within 50 yards of the green. The tee shot on a par 3 is also considered an approach shot.

Hideki Matsuyama has finished in the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Approach in each of the previous 7 seasons, the longest active streak on TOUR. — Sean Martin (@PGATOURSMartin) April 11, 2021

Proximity to the hole

Proximity to the hole measures the average distance (in feet) the ball comes to rest from the hole after the player’s approach shot.

This does not count any shot that originates on or from around the green. The approach shot must end on the green, in the hole, or around the green (within 30 yards of the edge of the green) for proximity to the hole to be measured.

Strokes gained around the green

Strokes gained around the green measures a player's performance on any shot within 30 yards of the edge of the green. It does not include any shot taken on the putting green.

Greens in regulation percentage

When you want to find a player capable of creating scoring opportunities, look to greens in regulation percentage. This statistic determines the percentage of holes where a player is able to get the ball on the putting surface with enough strokes remaining to make birdie or better.

A green in regulation (GIR) stroke is determined by subtracting two from par. For example, the first stroke on a par 3 is the GIR stroke, the second shot on a par 4 is the GIR stroke, and the third shot on a par 5 is the GIR stroke.

The goal on a par 3 is to hit the green on the first shot, while the goal on a par 4 is to hit the green on the second stroke, and so on.

To calculate GIR percentage, divide the number of greens hit in regulation by the number of holes played.

What a round! Paul Casey shoots a 62 to take the lead at the Travelers Championship. He hit all 18 greens in regulation 🎯: https://t.co/PuaLIBWRRs pic.twitter.com/VWEyRmBPao — Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) June 23, 2018

Scrambling measures the percentage of time a player misses the green in regulation but still makes par or better.

At a tournament like the RBC Heritage , where the greens are small, players must rely on their short game to save par. Ten of the last 14 winners at this tournament ranked inside the top 60 for scrambling on tour. 

Putting average

Putting average measures the average number of putts taken per green in regulation. By using GIR to calculate putting average, the statistic eliminates the variance caused by a player chipping close to the hole and recording one putt. 

Patrick Reed and Justin Thomas rank first and second, respectively, in putting average, while Bubba Watson ranks 213th on tour. 

Bogey avoidance

As important as it is to make birdies, it's just as crucial not to bogey and fall down the leaderboard. Bogey avoidance measures the percentage of time a player makes a bogey or worse.

Simpson and Russell Henley are currently tied on tour for the lowest bogey percentage.

Scoring average

On the PGA Tour's site, you can find a player's actual scoring average — or the average number of strokes per completed round — and adjusted scoring average, which involves more complicated math but better quantifies a player's abilities.

Adjusted scoring average is weighted by taking the stroke average of the field into account and is a good way to determine who is playing best among their peers ahead of a tournament.

You can break down scoring average into further detail with par 3 scoring average, Round 1 scoring average, back nine scoring average, and so on.

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Ranking the 10 best PGA Tour golfers less than one month before start of The Masters

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It was a wild a week at The PLAYERS Championship as Scottie Scheffler scored a 17-under par and cruised to a 5-shot victory over Tyrell Hatton on Sunday at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

The 5-shot victory for Scheffler, which is his sixth win in 392 days dating back to last year’s WM Phoenix Open for his first PGA Tour title, is the largest margin of victory at The PLAYERS Championship since 2006 when Stephen Ames won by six strokes.

For the first time ever, there were three hole-in-ones on No. 17, the par-3 island green this week at The PLAYERS Championship.

Hayden Buckley got the first ace during the opening round. Aaron Rai captured the second during Saturday’s third round and Alex Smalley carded a one on the scorecard during the final round. Smalley’s ace was the first hole-in-one on a Sunday at The PLAYERS Championship since 1997.

In addition to Rai nailing a hole-in-one, Saturday’s third round saw a picture-perfect day of golf with hardly any wind, especially compared to Friday’s second round having to be suspended and moved to Saturday morning due to inclement weather.

More history was made on Saturday at The PLAYERS Championship as the perfect golfing conditions gave way for Tom Hoge, who recorded a 10-under 62 third round for the new course record as he finished at 10-under par and tied for third place.

Sunday at The PLAYERS Championship marked one month until the green jacket will be awarded at the Masters, the first major of the season.

Here are the top 10 players on the PGA Tour four weeks ahead of Masters Sunday.

10. Sahith Theegala

Last year Sahith Theegala was one of the top rookies as he was coming up just short at multiple events, similar to the likes of Will Zalatoris. Theegala, who is still looking for his first PGA Tour win, has five top 10s this season with his most recent coming at The Genesis Invitational last month.

Theegala is fourth this season in total birdies and seventh with 11 consecutive cuts made.

9. Xander Schauffele

Xander Schauffele has three top 10s this season as he is looking to peak as the season progresses. Schauffele, who is considered as one of the best players to currently not have a major victory under their belt, tied for third at The American Express that was primarily fueled by a final round 62 and the longest hole out of the season from 226 yards.

Schauffele, who leads the PGA Tour with 19 consecutive made cuts dating back to last season, is currently ninth in strokes gained approach the green as he is No. 6 in the OWGR.

8. Tom Hoge

Tom Hoge, who found success in his first tournament at TPC Sawgrass, has played well this season with three top 10s. That included a third-place finish at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, the first designated event this season.

Hoge also has a fourth-place finish at the Shriners Children’s Open in October as he is first in strokes gained approach the green and fourth in proximity to hole.

7. Chris Kirk

Chris Kirk won The Honda Classic a few weeks ago for his first PGA Tour victory in eight years. During that time, Kirk was able to turn around his alcoholism and is now two years sober, which has also led to success on the course, especially mentally.

Kirk, who is seventh in the FedEx Cup standings with three top-10s, leads the PGA Tour in 3-putt avoidance, is second in approaches from 125-150 yards and is 17 th in total strokes gained.  

6. Jason Day

Jason Day has started to get it going as of late, recording four of his five top-10 finishes in four consecutive starts. He tied for seventh at the Farmers Insurance Open, fifth at the WM Phoenix open, ninth at The Genesis Invitational and 10 th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. His other top-10 came at the Shriners Children’s Open.

All of Day’s made cuts have seen him finish at 21 st or better, showing the opportunity to compete each week. Day, who is currently 20 th in the FedEx Cup Standings, is second on the PGA Tour in scrambling and bogey avoidance while being sixth in strokes gained total that has rejuvenated the Aussie to be in a possible winning situation later this season.

5. Keegan Bradley

Despite missing the cut last week at The PLAYERS Championship, Keegan Bradley has had a quiet rise to being one of the best players this season. Bradley, who won the ZOZO Championship during the Fall Swing, has four top-10s this season, including a second-place finish at the Farmers Insurance Open in January.

Bradley also has a fifth-place finish at the Sanderson Farms Championship to kick off his season that was fueled by a third round 64 for his lowest round this season. Last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Bradley tied for 10 th , recording a final round 67 as all seven of his final rounds that he has appeared win has been at or below 70.

4. Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy has not played in as many events compared to Max Homa, Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm this season but has been in the discussion for World No. 1.

After his win at The CJ CUP in South Carolina, McIlroy has a couple finishes around 30 th at both the WM Phoenix Open and at The Genesis Invitational. He was able to rebound by finishing tied for second at the Arnold Palmer Invitational but missed the cut this past week at The PLAYERS Championship.

McIlroy, who has been a vocal leader for the PGA Tour, leads the Tour in driving distance and inside the top 10 in strokes gained total tee-to-green, off-the-tee and approach the green as he hovers around the No. 10 spot in the FedEx Cup Standings and looks to win his second straight and fourth overall FedEx Championship in August to conclude the 2022-23 PGA Tour season.

Related: How the PGA Tour should feel that all four majors will accept players from LIV Golf

3. Max Homa

Max Homa has had a solid 2022-23 season that has included two wins, in addition to his performance for the U.S. in the Presidents Cup a week after winning the Fortinet Championship.

During The PLAYERS Championship, Homa had an opportunity to contend on Sunday, but he landed in the water on the par-3 No. 17 to prevent any chance of placing higher as he finished part of the handful at 8-under par, tying for sixth.

Homa, who currently remains No. 2 in the FedEx Cup standings after The PLAYERS Championship, is tied with Day with five top-10 finishes this season, which only trails Scheffler and Rahm. He is currently third in strokes gained total and is inside the top 10 in strokes gained tee to green and strokes gained approach the green.

2. Jon Rahm

Jon Rahm had it going on as he was able to get back to World No. 1 in the OWGR with three victories in a span of about six weeks.

In addition to leading the PGA Tour in strokes gained total, Rahm is also first in birdie or better conversion percentage, birdie average and strokes gained total.

Over the last few weeks, Rahm has been enduring the challenges of a long PGA Tour season by his withdrawal this week in addition to his tied for 39 th finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, ending his stretch of eight top-10 finishes in nine starts dating back to the FedEx St. Jude Championship during last year’s FedEx Cup Playoffs.

1. PLAYERS Championship winner: Scottie Scheffler

The battle for the top spot was a tight one but came down to play over the last few weeks, despite Rahm recording one more victory over Scottie Scheffler this season. This comes after Scheffler tied for fourth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

With his win this week, Scheffler returned to World No. 1 in the OWGR while earning $4.5 million and 600 FedEx Cup points, which moved him up one spot to No. 3, only behind Homa and Rahm.

So far this season, Scheffler trails Rahm for the top spot in scoring average, strokes gained total and leads the PGA Tour in greens in regulation percentage and bogey avoidance.

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Scottie scheffler’s pga tour dominance continues with 2024 rbc heritage victory.

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Scottie Scheffler reacts after a putt on the ninth hole during the final round of the RBC Heritage ... [+] golf tournament, Sunday, April 21, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

The world’s top-ranked golfer is dominating the PGA Tour. Scottie Scheffler won the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Monday morning following a weather delay and restart late Sunday—his fourth win in his last five starts. He added a tartan plaid jacket to his second green jacket at The Masters , which followed wins at The Players Championship and Arnold Palmer Invitational .

Scheffler carded an 8 under par 63 on Saturday to take a 1-stroke lead over Sepp Straka and 2 strokes ahead of his final round playing partner at The Masters, Collin Morikwa. Both those players shot a 1 over par 72 in the final round to fall back.

Scheffler entered Sunday’s final round as the -165 favorite on FanDuel Sportsbook to win the tournament with Straka and Morikawa both +650 and Masters runner-up Ludvig Aberg +1100 sitting 3 shots behind. Scottie was +450 to win at the start of the RBC Heritage .

Golf’s 27-year-old superstar was 3 under par through 11 holes Sunday and 19 under par with a 4-shot lead over six players when play was suspended before resuming 2 1/2 hours later at 7 p.m. ET. Scheffler played three more holes and took a 5-stroke lead into Sunday evening as play was suspended for darkness.

Early Monday he finished off the $20 million signature event with a 3-shot victory at 19 under par to earn another $3.6 million and take his season total to over $18 million. His bogey on the 18th hole ended a streak of 68 consecutive holes at par or better. Sahith Theegala finished second while Patrick Cantlay and Wyndham Clark T3 and Justin Thomas part of a 4-way tie for fifth.

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Justin Ray, golf Lead Data Analyst, added a number of posts on X to show Scheffler’s run of dominance. Beyond Scottie being the last player since Tiger Woods in 2008 to win four times in a five-start stretch on the PGA Tour, this post about Scheffler holding the lead following a round 31 times on Tour the past three seasons speaks to Scottie’s spectacular play and dominance. The next closest player to have led or co-led following a round is 16 times.

Scheffler ramains the No. 1 ranked player in the Official World Golf Rankings for the 49th consecutive week. His win at Harbour Town was also the 10th of his career on Tour. It took him 51 tournaments to win his 10th PGA Tour title following his first win. Tiger Woods did it in 59 events with David Duval the fastest from wins 1 to 10 at 33 starts.

Scheffler’s strokes gained stats are simply staggering. Scheffler ranks No. 1 in SG: Total, Tee to Green, Approach, No. 2 Off the Tee and top-10 Around the Green. He’s continued to win despite ranking outside the top 150 in SG: Putting. Scheffler gained more than a stroke both off the tee and on approach shots in his first three rounds at Harbour Town. He has done this in 27.2% of his rounds over the last three seasons. The rest of the PGA Tour has done it 4.7% of the time.

Scheffler then finished off another victory with a strong performance on Sunday at Harbour Town that included this chip-in for eagle from 53 feet off the front right short rough on the Par 5 at hole No. 2.

He’s now played 40 rounds in 2024 and has yet to shoot a round over par. It’s 44 in a row dating back to last year’s Tour Championship in August. Tiger Woods currently holds the Tour record at 52 rounds shooting par or better, which he set during the 2000-01 season.

Scheffler’s desire to win and determination to be the best is shining through despite any pressure that may mount. He’s nearly locked up 2024 PGA Tour Player of the Year honors before the end of April, and commented on his play and performances following rounds 3 and 4 while dealing with any added pressure.

Internally, do you feel less pressure compared to a few months ago when you're out there playing?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: It's tough to answer. I mean, I talked about it a bit at the end of last week. I really love winning, and I don't really like losing at all. It's one of those things where I try to manage the expectations of myself, kind of get that stuff out of the way and then go out there and compete.

Scheffler also added 700 FedEx Cup Playoffs Points to his total by winning the Signature Event at the RBC Heritage. He tops the points list with 3,915 - more than double Wyndham Clark (1,892) with Xander Schauffele, Ludvig Aberg and Sahith Theegala next at more than 1,500 points.

Scheffler is scheduled to compete in the Wells Fargo Championship May 9-12 at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, NC - another $20 million Signature Event. He should be a first-time father by then with wife Meredith expecting their child very soon.

“I definitely will enjoy the birth of my first child, and my priorities will change very soon, so golf will be fourth in line, but I still love competing,” he said last Sunday in the Butler Cabin at The Masters .

He competed at the highest level again without a letdown to win the RBC Heritage. Scheffler will enter the next major as the +450 favorite at the PGA Championship May 16-19 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, KY. FanDuel Sportsbook also has Scheffler at +6500 odds to win the Grand Slam and all four majors this year.

Scottie Scheffler is showing no signs of letdown and fans and bettors continue to support him despite ultra-low odds to win not seen since Tiger Wood’s dominance.

You can bet on it.

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Maja Stark in the Mix After First Round 65 at JM Eagle LA Championship

Jeongeun lee5 aces 18th hole on thursday at jm eagle la championship presented by plastpro.

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When you’re on a roll in golf, you might as well ride the wave as long as possible.

Maja Stark is hoping her recent wave of good play doesn’t stop anytime soon.

Stark, who comes into the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro on the heels of her best-career major championship finish at The Chevron Championship, fired a bogey-free 65 in the morning wave at Wilshire Country Club and is firmly in the mix, again, on the LPGA Tour.

Stark has now gone 44 holes on the LPGA Tour without making a bogey.

“It feels good. Don’t jinx it now,” she said Thursday in Los Angeles. “Obviously that’s what we want – I feel like I’ve just been more patient. Haven’t made any dumb mistakes. Just taking my medicine where I need to.”

Stark kept her tidy efforts going from The Woodlands to Hollywood, making two birdies in her first nine before turning on the jets for her second nine at Wilshire and making four birdies in a seven-hole stretch. She hit all 14 fairways in the first round and missed just three greens.

Grace Kim held the early lead after a 7-under 64. Stark sits just one shot back.

Stark admitted she was “so tired” when she arrived in L.A. after the marathon major week and “barely” practiced before she teed it up Thursday morning. She finished second alone at The Chevron, just two back of Nelly Korda’s winning mark. Stark’s previous best major result was a T9 at last year’s U.S. Women’s Open.

Along with her second-place result Sunday, Stark finished T3 just a few weeks ago at the Ford Championship presented by KCC. Things are clicking, she said, and there’s something – or someone – that isn’t going to be in her way this week.

“Nelly is always in front, so I don’t know,” Stark said with a smile. “I feel like I'm just playing solid. There is still a lot of things I think I could have done differently these two tournaments where it's been going really well.

“It just so depends on what everyone else is doing. If someone is having the week of their life, that's good for them. I'm just trying to learn from every round I have.”

Stark said the, well, stark contrast to her approach to things over the past few weeks has been how well she’s been managing things mentally.

“So, so much more confident in my game,” Stark said. “I still chickened out on a couple shots today which is just like me. I feel like I’ve been better at not chickening out as much. Then just knowing I can be patient and not have to chase birdies to actually make them, because I think when I’m chasing birdies, that’s when I make my mistakes.”

Stark’s lone victory on the LPGA Tour came in August 2022 at the ISPS Handa World Invitational, which she won by five shots over Allisen Corpuz. She had six top-10 finishes a year ago – including a T2 at the season opener at Lake Nona – but came into this year struggling, she admitted last week at The Chevron.

“Two months ago, it did not look likes this. It was actually terrible,” Stark said Sunday at The Woodlands about the state of her game after the calendar turned to 2024. “Nothing really was working for me, and then I feel like I really just analyzed everything and figured it out and got some great help from my coaches […] a lot about technique. It was kind of a mess earlier this year.”

Stark said Wilshire is “kind of similar” to Carlton Woods as there are a few pins she couldn’t go after like at The Chevron. Patience is key, she said, and concentrating on hitting to the bigger spaces of the greens will be something she’ll focus on over the balance of the week.

With a runner-up finish in her pocket and more good play through the first round at the JM Eagle LA Championship, Stark’s hopeful that her solid play means another solid result.

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Wyndham Clark Betting Profile: RBC Heritage

Betting Profile

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA - APRIL 09: Wyndham Clark of the United States plays his shot from the fourth tee during a practice round prior to the 2024 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 09, 2024 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)

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Wyndham Clark looks for a higher finish in the 2024 RBC Heritage after he finished 29th shooting -8 in this tournament in 2023.

The RBC Heritage Tournament & Course Info

• Date: April 18-21, 2024
• Location: Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
• Course: Harbour Town Golf Links
• Par: 71 / 7,213 yards
• Purse: $20M
• Previous Winner: Matt Fitzpatrick

At the RBC Heritage

• In his last five appearances at the RBC Heritage, Clark has an average finish of 49th, and an average score of -3.
• Clark last played at the RBC Heritage in 2023, finishing 29th with a score of -8.
• When Matt Fitzpatrick won this tournament in 2023, he had 0.457 Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (39th in the field), 5.013 SG: Approach the Green (10th), and 2.732 SG: Putting (20th).
• Fitzpatrick averaged 303.6 yards off the tee (15th in field), had a greens in regulation percentage of 66.67% (23rd), and attempted 25.25 putts per round (fourth) in that victory a year ago.

Clark's Recent History at the RBC Heritage

Clark's recent performances.

• Clark has finished in the top five in two of his last five appearances.
• He has made three cuts over his last five tournaments.
• Clark has finished within three shots of the leader in one of his last five tournaments. Over that span, he's finished within five shots of the winner two times and finished with a better-than-average score three times.
• He has an average score of -11 across his last five events.
• Off the tee, Wyndham Clark has averaged 311.2 yards in his past five tournaments.
• In his past five starts, Clark is averaging 2.899 Strokes Gained: Putting.
• In his past five starts, Clark is averaging 7.066 Strokes Gained: Total.

Clark's Advanced Stats and Rankings

• Clark has put up a Strokes Gained: Off the Tee average of 0.560, which ranks 12th on TOUR this season. Meanwhile, his average driving distance (310.1 yards) ranks seventh, and his 58.3% driving accuracy average ranks 109th.
• In terms of Strokes Gained: Approach, Clark ranks 33rd on TOUR with a mark of 0.446.
• On the greens, Clark's 0.636 Strokes Gained: Putting mark ranks 15th this season, and his 28.81 putts-per-round average ranks 74th.

Clark's Best Finishes

• Clark has participated in nine tournaments this season, winning one of them. He has also secured three finishes in the top-five.
• In those nine events, he made the cut seven times (77.8%).
• As of now, Clark has accumulated 1555 points, which ranks him second in the FedExCup standings.

Clark's Best Strokes Gained Performances

• This season, Clark's best Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee performance came at the Texas Children's Houston Open, where he ranked third in the field with a mark of 4.302 (he finished 31st in that event).
• Clark posted his best Strokes Gained: Approach mark this season at THE PLAYERS Championship (March 2024), ranking 12th in the field with a mark of 5.585.
• When it comes to Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, Clark produced his best effort this season at THE PLAYERS Championship (March 2024), ranking ninth in the field with a mark of 2.557.
• At the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February 2024, Clark recorded his best Strokes Gained: Putting mark this season -- 6.917, which ranked him No. 1 in the field. He finished first in that tournament.
• Clark recorded his best Strokes Gained: Total mark this season (16.126) at THE PLAYERS Championship in March 2024. That ranked second in the field.

Clark's Strokes Gained Rankings

Clark's past results.

All stats in this article are accurate for Clark as of the start of the RBC Heritage.

Note: The PGA TOUR has created this story via a machine-learning model using data from ShotLink , powered by CDW, in addition to player performance data. While we strive for accuracy and quality, please note that the information provided may not be entirely error-free.