The Most Expensive Shot in Golf & FootJoy Traditions Review

Happy Monday,

Thanks for your input with last week’s poll:

We need to deliver you some fresh content to help you improve your driving and approach play!

We’re on it and have one article and one video being drafted as you read this.

Something a little different this week on the golf performance front. As always we welcome your feedback as we try to create the best golf performance content we can.

The Most Expensive Shot In Golf

Every year we analyse what makes the best players in the world the best. The answer is pretty obvious, it is one number, and that number is their stroke average (average number of shots taken to complete 18 holes).

For most this is obvious, but surprisingly, the number of events a player plays or timings of great performances doesn’t play more of a factor. As you can see from the graph below, there are nearly no exceptions to the rule that a lower stroke average over the year results in a higher position in rankings.

This finding and the shape of the data look similar on every major professional tour across the world.

The result is that you can predict where a player will finish, based on their stroke average. You can also predict the change in stroke average needed for them to jump up 10, or 20 places in the rankings.

This is the starting point for elite players I’ve worked with. What is your current ranking? What is your goal? And what is the gain in stroke average we need to achieve this?

We then work through which areas of their game we need to realise that gain from. This approach and model can be found here.

This seems very high level, but this same premise can be applied if you are aiming to move from a 30 to 24 handicap, where will you gain those 6 shots from?

However, the real story lies in the middle of these graphics.

One shot separates 21st from 101st place on tour. This one shot was worth $7,723,291. Brian Harmon ($9,175,262) to Matt Wallace ($1,451,971).

The exact figure changes, depending on who you pick in these ranges, but the difference is always a bit chunk of cash.

Averaging one shot lower over the year is worth ~$ 7 million and there are 100 players in this group battling to find that extra shot.

The top 125 players in the PGA Tour keep their card, Erik van Rooyen had the misfortune of finishing 126th in the 22-23 season. One shot less per round would put him inside the top 40.

Of course, one shot better on average is a lot, but it never feels it during a round of golf where you walk off feeling like you left so many shots out there.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a 20 handicap or a PGA Tour player. You’ll always have the feeling you left lots of shots out there and it’s that next 1 shot that is always the hardest to find.