Greens in regulation (GIR)

Greens in regulation tracks how often a golfer's ball is on the putting surface early enough to have at least two putts available to make par: after one shot on a par-3, two shots on a par-4, or three shots on a par-5. It combines the outcome of the tee shot and approach shot into a single result.

The formula is GIR % = greens hit in regulation / holes played. This differs from driving accuracy, which looks only at the tee shot, since GIR reflects the approach shot as well, and it differs from strokes-gained approach in being a binary hit-or-miss stat rather than a continuous measure of proximity: two greens counted as "hit" could leave a two-foot putt or a forty-foot putt, and GIR treats them identically.

Practitioners pair GIR with putting statistics because it does not explain scoring on its own; a player can post a high GIR percentage and still score poorly with weak putting, or a low GIR percentage and score well by scrambling effectively around the green. Broadcasters and analysts increasingly favor strokes gained models, which capture shot quality more precisely by weighting proximity and starting difficulty, treating GIR as a simpler, complementary summary stat rather than a full performance measure on its own.