Start Shaving Strokes Now: 5 Golf Stats That Matter for Shooting Lower Scores

We live in the era of big data. While that’s mostly awesome, with countless statistics available about your golf game, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to analyze your performance.

Fear not.

To help simplify things for you, we asked our friends at Shot Scope to identify the five most important stats amateurs should focus on if they want to shoot lower scores.

1. Tee shot tendencies

Even for holes that end with “put me down for an eight,” everything starts at the tee box. Even for those who cling to the misguided principle of “drive for show, putt for dough”, if you can’t get off the tee and reach the green effectively, does your putting even matter?

Knowing your tee shot tendency is a simple way to shave strokes without taking a lesson or buying a new driver. If your data shows you rarely miss left but frequently drift right, simply adjust your aim accordingly and work with your natural tendency.

That said, a lesson probably couldn’t hurt.

2. Club distances

Understanding your club distances is crucial for performance improvement.

On one hand, that seems pretty obvious. On the other, there’s plenty of data that suggests that golfers habitually overestimate how far they hit the golf ball.

It seems there’s a constant battle between reality and ego and, more often than not, ego wins. That’s sub-optimal as it’s more than a little important that you understand how far you actually hit each club as well as the gaps between them.

When you’re carrying a water hazard (or failing to carry it), penalty strokes accumulate quickly. Knowing your real distance numbers provides the wisdom to know when to go for it and when to lay up.

We’ve all experienced the rage-inducing disappointment of a chunked chip and while those are frustrating, they won’t add strokes to your score nearly as much as frequent soft landings in what amounts to grossly oversized puddles.

To help you make smarter on-course decisions, Shot Scope provides golfers with a Performance-Average (P-Avg) distance for each club. By removing outliers from the equation P-Avg shows how far a well-struck shot will travel. If the P-Avg suggests you can’t get there, trust it.

3. Greens in regulation

This third stat connects directly with the previous two.

Maximizing your chances of hitting greens in regulation starts with understanding your tee shot tendencies. From there, leverage your real distance data to select the right club to avoid the most common amateur mistake—coming up short.

For the average amateur golfer (15 handicap), the primary miss on approach shots is landing short of the green. It happens an almost astonishing 54 percent of the time from beyond 50 yards.

Whether it’s mishits, under-clubbing or other factors, better knowledge of your club distances prevents the avoidable strategy error of not taking enough club.

Hitting more greens and avoiding the challenge of getting up and down is an efficient way to save strokes. And that leads us to our next stat.

4. Up-and-down percentage (by club)

Unless you are absolutely meticulous in how you track on-course stats, this one all but requires a performance tracking product. What is this invaluable data? Your up-and-down percentage by club.

Converting an up-and-down opportunity when you miss the green is difficult. From inside 50 yards, the average golfer has only about a one-in-three chance of success, meaning there’s a 66-percent chance of dropping a stroke.

In a previous post, we shared that Shot Scope data reveals that less loft might actually help players get up and down more frequently around the greens. What most average golfers don’t realize is that success rates vary significantly, not just based on distance, but based on the club you use around the green.

For example, many golfers will use their gap, sand and lob wedges almost equally around the green without understanding that they achieve significantly better results with one rather than with the other two.

With shot tracking, you can identify the club gives you the most success around the greens which will hopefully entice you to use it more often.

While certain situations may dictate your club selection, knowing your up-and-down likelihood with each club around the green can transform your short game.

5. Make percentage inside 0-3 feet and from 3-6 feet

Finally, you should know your make percentages from zero to three feet and three to six feet.

Why focus on these two specific ranges? To highlight both how essential it is to be solid inside three feet and how dramatically important it is to finish inside rather than outside that three-foot circle on longer putts.

Data shows that, across all handicaps, making nine out of 10 putts from within three feet is the benchmark. Convert fewer than that and you’re giving away strokes to your competition.

Here’s the Shot Scope data from inside three feet.

Not confident from this distance? Make short-range putting practice your favorite.

Although an extra three feet might not seem like a significant difference, as the data below shows, the make percentage drops dramatically when you move just slightly farther out.

From three to six feet, the chances of holing a putt plummet. A 25-handicap golfer’s success rate falls from 90 percent to just 50.

Even scratch golfers miss one in four putts from this distance, a 23 percent drop compared to putts from inside three feet.

While nobody expects to hole many long putts, ideally you can keep your misses within a three-foot circle.

Take it to the course

There you have it: Shot Scope’s five critical stats to master this season. All of these metrics and more (including Strokes Gained) are available with Shot Scope performance tracking products.

With Shot Scope, updates are free and there are no subscription fees ever.

Are ready to make 2025 your best season yet? Start tracking your game now.

Shot Scope is the Official On-Course Data Partner of MyGolfSpy.

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