PGA Tour: How to win with the season’s most important skills
By Bill Felber
Scrambling: 58.9
The scrambling percentage is an increasingly important statistic. In fact for full-season assessment it has recently emerged as the most important of the “traditional” skills, surpassing greens in regulation.
The 58.9 percent relationship between scrambling success and scoring average continues a trend of importance that began to accelerate in 2017. The correlation was 52 percent that season, peaking at 61 percent in 2018 (third strongest) then locking in at 58 percent (second strongest) in 2019.
The category average since the stat’s creation in 1992 is 57.86 percent.
Daniel Berger led the Tour this season with a 67.45 success percentage, followed by Xander Schauffele (66.49), and Brendon Todd (66.10). Berger ranked sixth and Schauffele fifth in scoring average for the season with Todd 26th. Of the 193 players who completed enough rounds to qualify statistically, the Tour average was 58.425 percent.
The importance of scrambling percentage with respect to scoring average has varied widely across the seasons, probably due to significant year-to-year differences in course setups. When it was first kept, scrambling percentage emerged as a dominant characteristic of success, peaking at a 74 percent correlation back in 1993.
But the importance of the stat gradually mellowed, declining to a low of 41 percent in 2016. So the four-season climb from that low now in progress represents something of a return to normality.