The Stats Behind Amateur Golf in 2024
As the year draws to a close the team at Shot Scope thought it would be fitting to look at the data surrounding the 2024 golfing season.
How did your 2024 season unfold? Did you hit your targets? Did you have any? Setting some goals whether it be short or long-term term can benefit your game and provide some additional motivation.
If you track your game using a Shot Scope performance tracking product, then all the shots you have hit over the year have contributed to the statistics in this article!
Shot Scope users have recorded upwards of 79 million shots, played 1.06 million rounds and navigated their way around 18.7 million holes - with varying degrees of success!
The scoring data below shows how golfers fared as they made their way through all 18,776,912 holes of golf.
As you may, or may not, expect the most common scores recorded were bogeys and pars with 6.5 million and 6.3 million logged in the database.
Birdies or Triples? Golfers will be delighted to know that they made 186,795 more birdies than triple bogeys in 2024 which would suggest birdies are more common than triple bogeys - great news for the weekend golfer.
How did players fare off the tee? We again look at the two opposite ends of the spectrum to show the highs and lows of the game that is golf:
Of the 10,314,641 driver tee shots recorded only 2.19% were over 300yds - not as many as the social media golfers will lead you to believe.
Regardless, there were some bombs hit on the course, and at the other extreme, some players had a few misfires off the tee with 55,440 drives traveling less than 50yds.
If you topped it off the tee this year, remember you are not alone and it happened another 55,439 times!
What about around and on the greens? How many players got up and down? How many recorded the dreaded three putt? The stats are below:
From over 11.6 million attempts at getting up and down when missing the green, Shot Scope users successfully saved their par 22% of the time - missing the green more often than not results in a dropped shot, hence the 6.5 million bogeys.
When hitting the green in regulation, and with the flatstick in hand, some golfers gained strokes where others lost them:
Interestingly, when hitting the GIR, players are just as likely to three putt as they are single putt.
This could suggest that the first putt is the most important, even though all shots count the same. If you give the first putt a chance you may hole it, and if not, have a good look at a two putt. If you hit a terrible first putt, then you could be looking at a costly three putt quite easily.
Essentially, don’t be scared to have a run at it on your first putt, if it doesn’t get to the hole it can’t go in anyway.
Last but not least, we look at those who have joined the club every golfer wants to join, the hole in one club:
Unsurprisingly, the number of golfers to record a hole in one is low at less than 1% (0.022%) with someone penciling in a single blow just once every 4472 attempts at a par 3.
It would be very interesting to know how many of the 941 players to have a hole in one went on to make a bogey, double or worse on the next tee as they try to regain their composure.
If you want to contribute to these stats and learn the strengths and weaknesses that make up your golf game, be sure to check out Shot Scope performance tracking products.
Over 100 tour level insights into your game can be collected via GPS watch, laser rangefinder, or on your cell phone with lifetime free updates with Shot Scope.
We hope you have a very successful 2025 season and wish you a Merry Christmas when it comes.