What is a good tee shot?

What is a good tee shot?

We all know one when we see it, but what statistically is a good tee shot? The Shot Scope data team looks at the stats behind amateur driving, starting with distance.

If you are one of Shot Scope’s performance tracking user, your data has contributed to the stats in this article!

With driver in hand, the above Performance-Average distances tell us how far the different handicaps typically hit their tee shot.

Now of course, this is not to say that you can only hit it as far as the above distances, there are of course exceptions - both shorter and longer.

Regardless, Shot Scope’s Performance-Average measurement provides golfers with one of the most accurate distances in golf. How? Well, P-Avg. removes extreme outliers from the dataset, both short and long, to give players a distance they can expect a well-struck shot to travel.

Something worth noting is that no one is routinely hitting their driver 300+yds and in fact the average golfer (15hcp) is just shy of 240yds off the tee - don’t believe everything you see on social media!

If you are considerably different from these distances, then you are either above, or below, average for your handicap range. What is interesting, is the relationship between longer drives and lower handicaps.

Although, it makes perfect sense when you think of the second shot, our scratch player being 80yds closer compared to the 25hcp golfer means the two have very different approach shots!

Is distance everything?

Perhaps not everything but it would appear to be the main differentiator, especially when we look at the amateur golfers’ likelihood of hitting the fairway off the tee:

One thing that becomes immediately apparent is that there is not a huge difference between the handicaps, with the 25hcp golfer only 4% less likely to hit the fairway than the scratch golfer.

You may be wondering how that could be and there are a few things to take into consideration, but again it relates to distance.

Swinging faster, or hitting the ball ‘harder’, is necessary to hit the ball further (amongst other things however speed is non-negotiable) but this extra speed comes with a trade-off - your wilder shots could be wilder.

But, to get back to our fairways hit, if the higher handicapper is typically hitting it shorter, their bad shots are less likely to be as costly. 

For example, the scratch golfer who hits it 285yds is rewarded with scoring opportunities when it is up the middle. However, if they are having an off day from the tee box, 285yds into the trees can make for some challenging recovery shots. 

So what is a good tee shot?

Based on the data presented above, a statistically good tee shot is one that finds the fairway and is close to your handicap benchmark in terms of distance.

A tee shot that is considerably longer than your handicap benchmark and in the fairway is a great shot. 

One thing that you should hopefully take away from this is that better players don’t necessarily hit every fairway, but they do typically hit it further.

Bryson DeChambeau, whether you like his style of play or not, pretty much embodied this when he won the US Open at Winged Foot in 2020 - hit it long and find it. For his 72 hole tournament, Bryson hit 23 fairways out of a possible 56…

Winged Foot had been set up with precision in mind. The rough was incredibly thick just off the fairway and yet despite this DeChambeau was the only player to finish under par, with 6 shots between him and second place.

So, a good tee shot is… long and findable? Yes, it would seem that way.

If you are hitting it in places you can’t find (out of bounds or in hazards) get some tuition from a nearby pro with the Shot Scope Academy feature.

Academy streamlines the teaching process through performance data and helps both coach and player get the most out of every lesson.

Get the most out of your game with a Shot Scope performance tracking product - lower scores and more enjoyable golf await you!