Putting Make Rates

Golfers often struggle with reality on the golf course. One area that most get it wrong is on the green.

Golf can be leveled significantly with the handicap system and, of course, EVERYONE is capable of hitting a worldy every so often. The closer to the green you get the disparity between the pros and different handicap categories reduces.

If you happen to watch golf on the TV the broadcasts often end up becoming a highlight reel – if a non-featured player appears on screen you can almost guarantee that they are about to hole a monster putt.

Pro golfer stats have been available for quite some time now and, yes, they are great short putters but did you know that the average make rate for a USPGA professional from 8 feet (2,44m) is only 50%?

Aside from the quality of the greens, these guys play on they also practice and are very, very good. How many weekend warriors have you seen expecting to hole everything from that distance?

Thankfully, companies like Shotscope & Arccos have been making some of their huge datasets available to the public also. This allows you, in-app, to check your putting stats and make comparisons against other golfers in your handicap bracket,

I thought it would a nice idea to create a page/form that is accessible by phone so that you can check what your chances of holing a putt are or the likelihood of three-putting.

So I made 2 pages based on the data I found.

Pro Make Rates

This data is available from the USPGA. It contains one, two, and three-putt percentages and the expected score from every “feet” of distance to 99 feet. Select your distance and the unit of measurement and you will see what your chances of holing out are.

Amateur Make Rates

Getting usable data for amateur golfers was a lot harder. I managed to find this article by Shotscope which has some general categorizations. I made a similar sort of form.

Bear in mind that all amateur tracking stats are subject to GPS and potentially user input so the accuracy will not compare to that of the professionals’ data.

I would love feedback on this, you can comment below or tweet me. The goal of the pages would be to convert them to apps and the input for distance could be tracked by the device’s GPS. But one step at a time.

What do you think? Is this useful?

You’re 8ft from the cup what are your chances of holing out? #golf

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