Driving Accuracy by Handicap - What's Your Target?

Sending bombs straight down the fairway is probably one of the most coveted abilities in golf. There's just something about being able to hit a ball further than the rest of your foursome that gives you a special feeling, even if it doesn't translate to the rest of your game. However, what happens when you miss the fairway?

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Well, today we'll dig into millions of rounds to analyze the Driving Accuracy by Handicap and the correlation to # of penalties per round to help you see where you stand in terms of hitting fairways out of the tee.

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This will also help you set realistic targets of what % of fairways you should be hitting by allowing you to compare yourself against players with slightly better handicaps.

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Let's dig in!

Blue bars represent the fairway accuracy and the green line represents the average number of penalties per round.

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As we can see, scratch golfers hit fairways 63% of the time, which means they hit 9 fairways out of the 14 driveable holes while high handicappers, hit about 7 of those. However, the real difference in driving comes from the fact that when high handicappers miss, their misses have higher dispersion, therefore incurring in more penalties (almost 6 per round vs 1 for scratch golfers)

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If you'd like to keep track of this and many other stats that will help you improve your game, you should become a   PRO Member. You'll notice patterns, strengths, and weaknesses that will help you identify gaps in your game to address the next time you hit the range.

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Enjoy your golf!

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