Fairways Hit is an incomplete statistic – follow your tee shots instead

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Traditional golf statistics do not give a complete picture of your performance on the course. They are a good starting point, but statistics such as putts per round can be misleading. In this article I want to focus on why fairways hit is an incomplete statistic.

Tee shot performance is crucial for scoring. But if you only follow your progress based on how many fairways you have missed versus missed, you will not get an accurate representation of your tee success.

I am going to offer an alternative way to follow tee shots. Hopefully my other view will help you better manage your expectations and help you focus on how you can improve.

The purpose of a tee shot

When you put it on par 4 or par 5, the overall goal should be to hit the ball as far as possible while keeping it in play. Golf is a game of proximity, and modern statistical analysis has proven that the closer you are to the hole of the tee, your chance of placing a lower score increases. Moreover, in the shipping channel is not always a requirement.

Choosing an optimal goal and club choice based on the hole design helps you improve your chances. In this article I discussed how I use dispersion analysis and hole layouts to plan my tee shots.

A look at dispersal patterns covered with satellite images from a hole

Long story short, regardless of the level of the golfer you are, you want to keep the ball in front of you. Although erroneous tee shots cannot be completely prevented, they can damage your overall score much more than poor put performance.

However, I am against using the fairway as the only measure of success. I believe that even if you miss a fairway, but still have a clear path to the green with a manageable lie, I would say you were successful.

Different levels of success

When I discussed golfer performance per handicap level, I showed that a tee-shot in the trees costs a golfer about 1.1 shots. A fairway bunker is even more punishable with 1.4 shots. But the light rough? It is only a fine of about 1/3 of a shot. Of course the landing in the fairway gives you the best chance to hit the green, but everything is not lost if you don't keep your tee-shot short.

The data from Shot Scope show how punishment certain obstacles on the track can be

In my estimation, it makes sense to group tee shot results into four separate categories:

Fairway – perfect lie and a clear path to the green.
Rough – manageable lie and a clear path to the green.
Trouble – in the trees, fairway bunker, or a hard lie in rugged. Any recovery situation that makes it unlikely that you can reach the green.
Penalty – if your ball goes out of bounds, is lost, or is in a penalty area.

I can't take every situation on the job into account, but I think you can use these four scenarios as simple guidelines. You can even merge the last two (problems / penalty) if you want. Another reservation would be the dreaded top shot; you can add that to the problem category.

Anecdotally speaking, I can tell you that one of the keys to lowering your scores is eliminating problems and penalty tee shots. Many golfers get angry with themselves if they miss a fairway. But if you are still in the game and can easily get your ball near the green or on it, you have considerably eliminated your chances of making a double bogey. That my friends are one of the keys to becoming a better golfer.

As a side note, I should also warn you to try to correct your mistakes with aggressive play when you get into a recovery situation. If you are bogey, keep pace with PGA Tour players, which I discussed in this article. Return your ball to the game and take your medicine.

Tracking tracking

Although I don't believe that all golfers should keep their statistics, I think it's a good idea for most of you. With technology there are numerous apps and shot-tracking systems with which you can keep track of your recordings on the course.

You can get very interesting visual representations of your tee shots that can help you make smarter strategic decisions and even evaluate your equipment.

A representation of the tee shot dispersion data from GAME GOLF
T-shirt visualization of Shot Scope

If you follow your stats the old-fashioned way, I advise you to go beyond fairways hit with these four (or three) categories. You can rename the "successful tee shots" stat – and keep track of your percentage of tee shots that end up in the first two categories (fairway and rough). For example, if you hit 5 fairways and had eight other tee shots that avoided problems and penalty situations, your successful tee shots would be 13/18 or 72% for the day. That's not too bad!

I think many of you will find that you may not be as bad as you think. In addition, if you notice that the amount of problems and penalty situations is significant, it might be worth investigating the cause of the problem. This can be club / goal selection, equipment issues or a technical problem with your golf swing.