This Kin Lo guy is pretty sharp. I have been reading his stuff all year and it's always spot on. Looking forward to seeing more of his analysis in 2009.

I don't think those numbers prove anything about the importance of hitting the fairway.

They do show that narrowing of fairways has had almost no effect on how often the players hit them--despite averaging 30 yards longer off the tee. I'm guessing that's due to the fact that today's balls don't curve as much, which allows the players to swing a little harder.

K1P

I would like to see the fairways hit percentage of the top 10 players in 1980 and 2008 before passing my verdict on whether driving accuracy is more or less important these days or not. This chart is based on all players, regardless of performance, so it's useless as an "importance gauge".

Indeed, what Hawkeye says. You can't determine anything about whether it's "more important" or not by those kinds of numbers.

You have to correlate some measure of success (winning, scoring average, etc.) with hitting fairways to get an idea how important it MIGHT be. The USGA used prize money ranking, which was a poor choice for a measure of success...

Tiger won 78.3% of the money that he could have won (100% would have been won if he had won all of the events that he entered). That is phenomenal.

Singh, in 2nd place, earned 25% of the total he could have won.

Some interesting end-of-season PGA Tour statistics which illustrates that you do not have to have the perfect golf swing or the longest golf drive to succeed on the PGA Tour. I guess it’s all about grit, determination, a repeating golf swing, solid wedge/ scrambling play, distance control, good course management & shot selection, very consistent use of the golf putter, patience and being cool when under pressure.

http://www.golfblogger.co.uk/2008/11/16/pga-tour-stats-proves-you-do-not-have-to-be-hitting-each-fairway-green-to-succeed/