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Do young players really putt better?

A friend asked me today about a very common golf myth:

“Young players are fearless… and that is why they are better putters, right?”

I was curious about his question and took a quick look. Are young players better putters? I had three seasons’ worth of PGA Tour data handy (2021–2023), so I took a quick look at strokes gained putting vs age. I was planning to write about something else today, and didn’t have time to grab more data. But I plan on diving into this a lot deeper.

Here’s what the chart below says in plain English:

There isn’t much of a relationship between how old you are and how well you putt.

At basically every age (early 20s through late 40s), you see the same thing:

• Some players are great putters

• Some are poor putters

• And most are clustered somewhere around “average”

The trend lines are close to flat. If anything, there’s a tiny drift downward as players get into their 40s, but it’s small enough that you’d never want to hang your hat on it.

So if you’re looking for a clean “young players putt better” story… the data doesn’t really cooperate, but…

Limitations (and how we could make it better)

This was only three years of data, and it’s at the player-season level (meaning the same player can show up multiple times). With a bigger sample (15+ years) we’d get a cleaner picture, but I don’t expect the main conclusion would change much… age doesn’t appear to explain much about putting performance.

I am going to dive deeper into this and:

• Add more seasons

• Track each player over time to see what happens to each player as they age

But for a quick reality check on the “myth”?

Young players aren’t automatically better putters. Good (and bad) putting shows up at every age on tour.

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