RULE 1
The Scale: 0.0 to 10.0
Every player is rated weekly on a 0.0–10.0 scale, to one decimal. The scale is anchored, not relative — a 9.0 means the same thing in a major week as it does in a fall event. Most tour-quality weeks land between 5.0 and 8.0. Anything above 9.0 should be rare enough that you remember it.
0.0–2.9
Card-Wrecker
Missed cut by a mile, visible struggle, or WD without cause.
3.0–4.9
Grinding
Made the weekend or fought hard. Nothing clicked.
5.0–6.9
Tour Standard
Solid professional golf. Paychecks, not headlines.
7.0–8.9
Contending
In the mix on Sunday. Game travels under pressure.
9.0–10.0
Raw Elite
Performance of the season territory. Earned, never gifted.
Plain English
A 10.0 has never been awarded. Tiger at Pebble in 2000 would have been a 10.0. That's the bar.
RULE 2
The Five Metrics
The Raw Score is a weighted blend of five components. Four are built on measurable data; one is judgment — and we tell you exactly how much it can move the needle, so you know where the opinion lives.
Metric
What it measures
Weight
DrivingDATA · SG:OTT
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee for the week, normalized against the field, adjusted for course width and penal rough. Distance without position scores nothing here.
20%OF RAW
ApproachDATA · SG:APP
Strokes Gained: Approach, the single most predictive stat in golf — which is why it carries the heaviest data weight. Proximity from 175+ yards is tracked separately as a tiebreaker.
25%OF RAW
Short GameDATA · SG:ARG
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green. Scrambling percentage from rough vs. fairway lies is weighted by difficulty of miss.
15%OF RAW
PuttingDATA · SG:PUTT
Strokes Gained: Putting, with a volatility damper — putting is the noisiest stat in golf, so one hot week moves the rating less than one hot week of approach play. By design.
20%OF RAW
MentalJUDGMENT · CAPPED
The honest one: clutch factor. Scoring on the final nine with a lead or within three. Bounce-back rate after bogey. Decision quality under pressure (layup/go calls, club selection). This is the only subjective component — two raters score it independently and the scores are averaged.
20%OF RAW
Why "Mental" is capped at 20%
Because narrative is where sports media lies to you. A player's "aura" can move our number by at most one-fifth — the other 80% is math the player wrote with their own clubs.
RULE 3
Worked Example
Here is an actual weekly card, computed in front of you. Each metric is scored 0–10, multiplied by its weight, and summed. No rounding tricks: the Raw Score is what the arithmetic says.
S. SCHEFFLER · WK 24 · OAKMONT
VERIFIED
Driving8.5× .20
Approach9.6× .25
Short Game9.0× .15
Putting9.1× .20
Mental7.0× .20
Raw Score · Locked
9.3
(8.5×.20) + (9.6×.25) + (9.0×.15) + (9.1×.20) + (7.0×.20) = 1.70 + 2.40 + 1.35 + 1.82 + 1.40 = 8.67 → field-strength adjustment +0.6 → 9.3. The field-strength adjustment is published with every card.
RULE 4
Integrity Rules
4.1
Ratings lock at publication.Once a weekly card is published, the number never changes. If we got it wrong, the correction is published alongside it — the original stays visible, crossed out.
4.2
No access journalism.A player's rating is never influenced by whether they (or their agent, or their tour) talk to us. We'd rather lose the interview than cook the number.
4.3
The Mental score requires receipts.Every subjective Mental score above 8.0 or below 4.0 must cite specific, timestamped moments from the broadcast or shot data. "He looked nervous" is not evidence.
4.4
Conflicts get declared.If any rater has a personal or financial connection to a player, they're off that card and it's noted in the footer of the rating.
4.5
The method is versioned.If we change a weight or add a metric, the revision number at the top of this page changes, and old ratings are never retroactively recalculated.
RULE 5
What We Don't Rate
We rate golf. We do not rate personality, marketability, press-conference charm, swing aesthetics, or whether a player is "good for the game." A boring player who hits it to 6 feet all week outscores a charismatic one who doesn't. That's the whole point of a scorecard.
The standing offer
Think a rating is wrong? Email us the data. If you're right, the correction runs with your name on it. If you're wrong, we'll show you the math. Either way, somebody learns something.