The 2023 PGA Tour season: Approach, as always, is key to success
By Bill Felber
The PGA Tour is a lot like dating in one respect: approach is critical.
It was no different in 2023. As has been the case every season but one since the Strokes Gained formula was created, the correlation between the quality of a player’s approach game and his score was the strongest attribute among 181 qualifying Tour pros.
And that correlation is strengthening. For the third time in the last four seasons, it improved, this year to -.711 percent.
The lesson continues to be obvious.
If you want to succeed on the PGA Tour, work on your approach game.
Correlation is measured on a scale where +1.0 equals a perfect relationship between two sets of data, .0 equals no relationship whatsoever, and -1.0 equals a perfectly inverse relationship.
In Tour golf, where low scores are better, we are most interested in the inverse area of the scale, where higher performance in a skill contributes to a lower score. That makes -0.71 a very strong correlation.
The Strokes Gained system measures four specific skills related to a pro’s score: Strokes Gained Off The Tee, Approach The Green, Around The Green, and Putting.
The 2022/23 PGA Tour season, which concluded Sunday with Viktor Hovland’s victory at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, reiterated a constant of Tour play: the ability to hit approach irons accurately is the sine qua non of score reduction.
That probably goes against the grain of common thought since we are told week after week that a hot putter is the key to success on the PGA Tour. On a week-to-week basis, that is sometimes true. Mediocre putters get on a roll and ride that momentum to a contending position in the week’s event.
But over the course of a full season, putting plays a decided subservient role to each of the other three skills in determining a player’s sore. Approach is far and away the most important component.
Here are the final 2022-23 seasonal correlations for each of the four skills. Keep in mind that you want to be close to -1.0.
- Approach -.711
- Around the Green -.503
- Off The Tee -.479
- Putting -.448
Here’s a closer look at each of the correlations.
Approach the Green
The primacy of approach as a determining skill on the PGA Tour is no surprise. Approach has had the strongest correlation to score every year but one since Strokes Gained data was first calculated in 2004.
The sole exception was 2021, when play off the tee was more important.
The -.711 correlation is slightly above the historic average of -.684, and is the strongest since 2017 (-.713). The strongest correlation ever recorded between approach skill and stroke average was -.791 in 2006.
Not surprisingly, given the importance of approaches, six of the top 10 in scoring average also ranked among the top 10 in their approach game. That includes Scottie Scheffler, No. 1 in both approach and stroke average, Collin Morikawa (2 and 11), Xander Schauffele (3 and 4), Jon Rahm (4 and 3), and Rory McIlroy (7 and 2).
Here are the top 10 players in Strokes Gained Approach for 2023.
- Scottie Scheffler (1.197)
- Collin Morikawa (0.996)
- Xander Schauffele (0.862)
- Jon Rahm (0.805)
- Tom Hoge ( 0.759)
- Tony Finau (0.755)
- Rory McIlroy (0.732)
- Gary Woodland (0.712)
- Rickie Fowler (0.688)
- Viktor Hovland (0.653)
The only possible surprise among leaders in strokes gained approach was Hoge, who was fifth. Hoge ranked only 59th in stroke average, the weakest performance among the top 10.
Only three players among the top 25 in approach ranked outside the top 100 in scoring average, and only nine ranked outside the top 50.