OTIS Golf

Glossary

What is Scrambling?

How often a player still makes par or better after missing the green in regulation.

How it's calculated

Scrambling is a tour-published rate: of the holes where a player missed the green in regulation, the share on which they still made par or better. It counts outcomes, not technique — a holed bunker shot and a fortunate two-putt from the fringe score identically.

How to read it

Higher is better. It is the clearest measure of how well a player limits the damage on holes that have already gone wrong.

What it doesn't say

Scrambling rewards the outcome, not the difficulty of the position. A player who misses greens in easy places will scramble better than one who misses them short-sided, without being any better at recovery. It also interacts with the rest of the game in a way that flatters weak iron play: a player who misses many greens gets far more attempts, and a high rate off a large number of misses is not the same achievement as a high rate off a few.

OTIS tracks this stat across 15 PGA Tour seasons — see it for every player, or read how the numbers are sourced in the methodology.

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