Driving accuracy

Driving accuracy measures how consistently a golfer keeps their tee shot in the fairway on holes where a driver or long club is typically used off the tee. Par-3 holes are excluded, since players do not usually drive on them.

The formula is driving accuracy % = fairways hit / driving holes played. This differs from driving distance, which measures raw length regardless of direction; a player can rank near the top in distance while ranking low in accuracy, or the reverse. Its influence on scoring is increasingly captured by strokes gained off-the-tee, which accounts for both distance and accuracy together with the difficulty of the resulting lie, since missing a fairway into light rough costs far less than missing into trees or a hazard, a distinction driving accuracy alone cannot make.

Analysts pair driving accuracy with greens in regulation to diagnose whether a player's ball-striking weakness is off the tee or into the green, and it remains popular for its simplicity even as strokes-gained models have become the standard for evaluating overall shot quality. The main pitfall is comparing accuracy rates across tournaments without adjusting for course setup, since fairway width and rough severity vary significantly week to week.