From booming drives and perfect putting to deft chips and sublime scrambling, we take a look at who were statistically the best players on the DP World Tour in 2024.
Golf is a sport that requires a player to have many facets to play at the elite level: power, precision, patience and yes, sometimes luck, among many others.
It is a sport that can be played many different ways and is often required to be depending on the course and conditions you face.
And it is also a sport that requires the mind: decision making and mental strength under pressure are key components of all those that achieve true excellence.
Taking all that into account, you would also think that it is a sport that is difficult to boil down to numbers but one of the game's many eccentricities is that it focuses on numbers more than perhaps any other sport on the planet.
Here, we take a look at the players who topped some of the key metrics in the 2024 season.
Driving distance
The average number of yards per drive, measured on two shots per round
In 2021 Wilco Nienaber topped this chart and in 2022 it was Rory McIlroy. Nienaber then reclaimed his crown as king of the hitters in 2023 and this season the man top of the tree is........ Rory McIlroy.
The Northern Irishman averaged 328.71 yards off the tee, gaining a remarkable 27.09 yards on the field and hitting it over five yards further than his nearest competitior Oliver Bekker.
Niklas Nørgaard, Marco Penge, Hennie du Plessis and Alejandro del Rey were the only players to get within ten yards of McIlroy but Nienaber is back on Tour in 2025 after regaining his card through the Qualifying School - let battle commence.
Driving accuracy
The percentage of fairways found per round
There is much to be said for consistency and for the second season in a row Adrian Otaegui tops our driving accuracy charts.
While his rate of hitting 69.44% of fairways is slightly down on last season, it is still nearly 2% higher than that of nearest challenger Joel Girrbach and 12.32% better than the field average.
Shane Lowry, Thomas Aiken and Andy Sullivan close ot the top five, where Otaegui also found himself in 2022.
Greens in regulation
The percentage of greens hit in regulation per round, i.e. one for par threes, two for par fours, three for par fives
A perennial contender in this category after finishing fourth and second the past two seasons, Tommy Fleetwood has finally claimed the title as the DP World Tour's most accurate iron player.
His rate of 74.51% is 0.44% ahead of Joaquin Niemann and 7.02% ahead of the field, with Jordan Smith, Brandon Stone and Tyrrell Hatton also featuring in the top five.
An impressive 31 players had an average of over 70%.
Scoring average
The average number of strokes taken per round
If golf is essentially a game about getting the ball in the hole in the least number of shots then it seems fitting that the man who won the Harry Vardon Trophy shoud top this metric and so it proved with McIlroy topping it for the third year in a row.
His average of 68.50 betters his marks from 2022 and 2023 and is 0.40 clear of nearest challenger Fleetwood, the only other player to average less than 69 strokes a round having played the exact same amount with 50.
Thomas Detry, Jon Rahm and Harry Hall complete the top five.
Scrambling
The average frequency, as a percentage, of a player scoring par or better on holes where they missed the GIR
Spanish hands is one of the great clichés in the game but some things are cliché for a reason and Jon Rahm tops our list of players saving shots around the green.
In 16 rounds he missed 86 greens but successfully scrambled 58 times, a rate of 67.44% that is 0.77% better than nearest challenger Fleetwood, who topped this metric last season.
Matti Schmid, McIlroy and Bernd Wiesberger complete the top five.
Putting average
The average number of putts taken per green in regulation
He may have only played ten counting rounds but England's Harry Hall certianly made them count with the short stick.
His average of 1.69 putts per GIR saw him finish 0.08 ahead of the field and a slender 0.02 ahead of nearest challengers Billy Horchel and Tyrrell Hatton, who played seven and 16 rounds more respectively.
McIlroy, Detry, Lowry, Thriston Lawrence, Min Woo Lee and Alex Noren were then all on 1.72.
Most eagles
It is almost impossible to make an eagle without a quality tee-shot so it is little surprise that the big-hitting Niklas Nørgaard tops this chart with 23 over the season, with his average eagles per round also making the top ten at 0.22.
Fellow Dane Rasmus Højgaard and Del Rey are next with 20 eagles each followed by Sullivan on 19 and Shubhankar Sharma on 18.
There were 18 players who made 15 eagles or more.
Most birdies
He may top this list but Casey Jarvis will be wishing he had made two more gains after registering 498 across the season.
That is 41 more than nearest challenger Sam Bairstow, who played 13 fewer rounds, with Nørgaard on 447 and Johannes Veerman on 421 alongside Angel Hidalgo.
McIlroy made the most birdies per round with 221 across 46 rounds handing him an average of 4.80.
Wins
Without impressing in at least one of the above categories you will struggle to get any of these but wins are the things that will be remembed and in the 2024 season we had five players record two victories.
We had not even reached Christmas 2023 before both Dean Burmester and Louis Oosthuizen won in back-to-back weeks on the Opening Swing.
McIlroy then claimed a brace of Rolex Series wins at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic and DP World Tour Championship either side of Xander Schauffele's Major double at the US PGA and Open Championships.
Scottie Scheffler also won a Major as he picked up a second Green Jacket at the Masters before winning Olympic gold at Paris 2024.
