Where the winners in Junior Golf gain 75% of their strokes 🧠
MikkelGolf.com Newsletter #4
So your ambition is to win a National level junior golf tournament… How good do you have to perform to win? And how will you make up the strokes needed to separate yourself from the field? Let’s take a look at the big picture of what’s needed.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen the same pattern of scoring averages on two sperate junior tours. The first round scoring average was higher than the other rounds. You can find the article (and data) from the Norwegian Junior Tour HERE. And HERE is the article on the AJGA. This correlated to what I observed from college tournaments as well.
Today, we unveil how the winners on the Norwegian Junior Tour set themselves apart from the field by diving into the data. Here’s one of the results from crunching over 3000 lines of scoring data from the tour:
📊 The Value of Strokes: Where Winners Excel
The winners of the Boys Under-19 division gained an average of 8.95 strokes on the field per round. This field average includes every division that participated during the Srixon Tour (Norwegian Junior Golf Tour) this year. Don’t confuse this with the PGA Tour statistic strokes gained. The strokes the Srixon winners gained on the field is simply a measure of field average score minus winner score. Of the 8.95 strokes winners separated from the field per round, 2.36 of those strokes were gained by making more birdies. Roughly a fourth.
🎯 Limiting Mistakes
Additionally, 1.93 strokes were earned by making more pars, while winners further excelled by gaining 3.21 strokes through making fewer bogeys. They also secured 1.44 strokes by minimizing double bogeys or worse.
This data unveils a fascinating truth – roughly three-fourths of the strokes were gained by limiting their mistakes (making more pars, fewer bogeys, and fewer double bogeys or worse), and one-fourth was gained by making more birdies.
This data unveils a fascinating truth – roughly three-fourths of the strokes were gained by limiting their mistakes (making more pars, fewer bogeys, and fewer double bogeys or worse), and one-fourth was gained by making more birdies.
Here is a table for both the boys’ and the girls’ divisions:
At first glance, many will see this as quite surprising. We think of winning tournaments as hitting incredible golf shots, playing aggressive, and “winning” strokes in order to run away from the field. But the truth is that winning requires limiting your mistakes more than it requires doing the extraordinary.
🧢 Coaching Hat
So what is my coaching advice on how to limit your mistakes as a player? How do you make less bogeys and double bogeys?
The first piece to this puzzle is raw skill. It’s no secret that the winners on this Junior Tour are highly skilled players. This in and of itself is, in my opinion, is the biggest contributor to the cleaner scorecards posted by the winners. In all likelihood, the longer the club, the bigger the separation between the winners’ skills and the field average skills. Ball-striking is likely a large separator. Having a solid physical and technical foundation is imperative for acquiring the ball-control these winners posses. These skills obviously take time to develop and is a much more intricate journey than I can provide you through a newsletter. All I can say is build a solid physical and technical foundation (with the help of a quality coach), and practice your butt off 😃
However, there are other factors in bogey avoidance. Course strategy and the mental game both play large roles, and these parts are often what keep players with good skillsets from breaking into the winner’s circle. In my experience, a common culprit to both poor course strategy and mental game for good players is believing that you have to do the extraordinary in order to win. We end up “chasing birdies” and “playing on tilt” in pursuit of winning strokes on the field. This leads to worse bogey avoidance and therefore less chance of accomplishing what you are trying to in the first place (winning). 😉
I’m a big fan of playing different scoring formats on the course during practice in order to build your “golf IQ” and awareness of game-like situations. “Tough training, easy war” is an idea I subscribe to. I believe it’s great for your learning curve to see tougher formats in practice than you will in tournaments. Worst ball is an example of such an on-course format. But the opposite is true as well. Playing from the red tees (for a men’s player) is also a great format as you will have to go for greens and make decisions you wouldn’t have to normally make on your home course - while simultaneously being well under par and having to push to make even more birdies. Both are great things to incorporate in your practice. Widening the spectrum of difficulty in on-course formats during practice is a way to accelerate your golf-IQ. I’m currently working on a document outlining numerous on-course formats and their benefits, so stay tuned for that..
Thank you for being a reader of this newsletter. Please share it with some friends if you’ve found it interesting so far!
Warm regards,
Mikkel Bjerch-Andresen
Golf Coach and Analyst
www.mikkelgolf.com