The second women’s major of the year, the U.S Open, takes place at Erin Hills this week, coinciding with the annual Women’s Golf Week (May 27 – June 3, 2025). With women’s participation in golf on the rise, and with Shot Scope’s mission to help every golfer improve through innovative and accessible technology, there is no better time to take a deep dive into the statistics underlying women golfers.
How far should women hit it based on your handicap?
P-Avg. or Performance-Average is Shot Scope’s data metric that gives players a club distance that a well-struck shot will travel by removing extreme outliers from the dataset, both good and bad. With the average woman’s handicap in the mid-to-high 20s, depending on the region and governing body, a drive in the region of 160-170 yards would be considered on par with the average golfer.
If you are routinely hitting it 177 yards or longer, you are above average and are likely gaining strokes on your fellow competitors. If you are coming up a bit shy, then some added distance will help you post lower scores, as accuracy off the tee is not an issue.
Women golfers excel at hitting fairways.
If we apply these percentages to a course with four par 3s, all of the handicap brackets hit, on average, eight fairways per round. The 30 handicapper is only three percent shy of the 10 handicap golfer in terms of fairways hit. However, they are a whopping 44 yards shorter. When it comes to the second shot, this difference has a profound impact on club selection and the likelihood of hitting the green.
Where a 10 handicap golfer would have a PW in hand, the 30 handicap golfer could have up to a 5 wood. In terms of proximity to the pin, the 10 handicap golfer will typically be five times closer. Off the tee, undeniably, players are accurate, but does this translate to their approach play?
From 100 yards, how close are women hitting it?
Many may think that hitting the green from 100 yards is a guarantee, but the data paints a very different picture. For the average golfer, from 100 yards, the likelihood of hitting the green is around one in four, which means that 75 percent of shots from 100 yards will miss the green.
The most common miss in golf, in terms of approach play, is short, with roughly one in two shots coming to rest just shy of the green. If this sounds familiar, try playing to the back of the green distance on your GPS device, if you have one, you may find it transforms your approach play and green hit success. When missing the green, players face the challenge of attempting an up and down.
How do female players perform from close range?
When faced with the awkward distance of 10-20 yards and the decision of whether to pitch, chip, or try something creative, players have mixed success. In terms of up and down likelihood, the 10 handicap golfer is three times more likely to get up and down than the 30 handicapper.
Once on the green, the data behind putting highlights why getting up and down is so hard.
It all revolves around proximity. The difference between putts inside three feet and those from three to six feet is staggering. For the lower handicapper, the 10 handicap, the likelihood of holing their putt drops by just over a third from beyond three feet. For the average 20 handicapper, the likelihood drops from almost a dead certainty, 9 in 10, to roughly a 50/50 chance – a toss of a coin almost. For higher handicaps, they are twice as likely to hole from zero to three feet versus three to six feet (85 percent versus 40 percent). Although the drop off is significant, it should help with expectation management; putts from three to six feet are by no means a gimme, so don’t get frustrated if you aren’t holing them all.
Do you want statistics like this on your game? It could transform your golf.
Iris Wong, a golf content creator, used Shot Scope performance tracking technology to go from a beginner golfer to club champion in four years! Learn her story here.
With the U.S Women’s Open and Women’s Golf Week taking place at the same time, it’s shaping up to be a great week for golf.
Media provided by: Joanne Miller, Kevin Frisch PR
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