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Big Miss with Driver

This is an interesting topic, and the results might surprise you.

I was recently on the course with a very good amateur player. He is ranked inside the top 300 in the world. He hit a drive that was ~65 yards offline and ended up OB.

This simply can’t happen… or can it?

How often do players have a big miss with driver? For this analysis, I defined a “big miss” as something that was more than 40 yards from the middle of the fairway.

All of this data comes from the one BILLION+ shots in the Arccos Golf database (use code DATALOU15 to save 15%).

First let’s look at the percent of the time this happens by skill level:

• 0 to 5 index: 7.0% of drives

• 5 to 10 index: 7.3%

• 10 to 15 index: 7.7%

• 15 to 20 index: 7.8%

Does anything jump out at you? Interestingly, the percent of the time this happens is very similar across skill levels.

Now this doesn’t mean that 15 to 20 index players are just as straight as low index players…. Low index players hit the ball a lot farther, so technically they hit the ball a lot straighter than our high index friends. Think of it this way, if your ball is 40 yards offline and you have only hit it 195 yards in total, that ball is way more crooked than one that was hit 255 yards and is also 40 yards offline.

How about the percent of players at each skill group that hit more than 15% of their drives more than 40 yards from the center of the fairway:

• 0 to 5 index: 4.5% of golfers hit more than 15% of their drives more than 40 yards from the center

• 5 to 10 index: 5.0%

• 10 to 15 index: 6.5%

• 15 to 20 index: 7.1%

And finally, what about the percent of players that keep more than 99% of their drives less than 40 yards from the center of the fairway:

• 0 to 5 index: 1.1% of golfers keep more than 99% of their drives less than 40 yards from the center of the fairway

• 5 to 10 index: 1.2%

• 10 to 15 index: 1.8%

• 15 to 20 index: 2.5%

As you can see in this last one, very few players are keeping nearly all of their drives less than 40 yards from the center of the fairway

Higher handicap players have a dispersion that is *about* as wide as lower index players. This is why when you look at fairway percentage between different skill levels, it’s pretty similar.

Yet, and this is what I find very interesting, is that even through dispersion across skill levels is similar, somehow our higher handicap friends hit significantly more drives into penalty stroke (and recovery) situations.

I would *guess* that there are a combination of factors going on there. Are higher handicap players not as good at picking safe targets? Do higher handicap players get more nervous when there is trouble in play off the tee and those “nerves” lead to big misses at the wrong times?

These are some things that I think could explain the difference in penalty strokes per round.

My Thoughts

You are going to miss big. It happens to every golfer at every level.

Do we want to miss big? Nope. Not at all.

But it happens to everyone.

So next time it happens to you, don’t beat yourself up. Now if it’s happening too much, I would encourage you to seek out a good instructor and get some help as keeping the ball in play is critically important!

See you next week!

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