Do you hit it further than average for your handicap – Shot Scope | Shot Scope | Troon
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Do you hit it further than average for your handicap – Shot Scope

Have you ever wondered how you compare to your fellow amateur golfer? Shot Scope has the answers!

With over 350 million recorded shots, Shot Scope have comprehensive benchmarks for 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25hcp golfers to compare their game to.

This article looks at one of the highly debated areas of golf, distance. The distances mentioned are Performance-Average (P-Avg.) which removes 10% of extreme outliers, both good and bad, from data to give an accurate representation of how far you hit your clubs.

Here we have amateur golfers P-Avg. distances for driver:

The average golfer’s handicap index is around 15 so we can see that the majority of players are hitting it around 236 yards with a Driver. There is a lot of talk out there about crushing drives 300+ yards but this is simply not the case for most golfers.

Anything in the 240y region is on par with the majority of players and anything longer is above average. However, as you can see with the benchmark, if you are lower or higher than 15 then the average length changes.

Interestingly, the lower the handicap the further they hit it off the tee, this trend continues throughout the bag as we move to mid-irons, looking to the 7 iron:

As we would expect, based on the driver data, lower players hit their irons longer. Why is this an advantage? Well, put simply, would you rather hit a 7i into a green or a 5i? Or perhaps an even longer club yet?

We would imagine you would take the 7i over the longer club, and that is likely because your chances of hitting the green are significantly higher with shorter clubs.

For the average golfer, with a 15 handicap, they are twice as likely to hit the green with a 7i compared to a 5i – quite a significant difference!

One of the key statistics Shot Scope highlights as a benchmark for the amateur golfer is Greens in Regulation. This is for a variety of reasons but for now, just know that if you can hit more greens, you will save strokes.

Perhaps not revolutionary insight, however, you are better off having a putt from 30ft than you are having a chip from 10y. A missed green forces you to attempt an up and down which is a lot more difficult than you might think

Distance, distance, distance…

Whether it be on the tee, hitting into greens, or on them, there is no escaping that it is a crucial part of the game.

If you want valuable insight into your game, including Performance-Average club distances and Strokes Gained with no subscription fees, check out Shot Scope performance tracking products here.