St Rule Trophy 2022

1 June 2022

This article takes a dive into the Shot Scope data of the 2022 St Rule Trophy winner Jen Saxton. The 54 hole tournament was played at St. Andrews with 2 rounds played on the New Course on Saturday and the final round being played on the Old Course on Sunday. Jen won the tournament by 3 shots, with an interesting final round to say the least.

The St. Rule Trophy is a prestigious ladies amateur event which has previously been won by Annika Sorenstam, Catriona Matthew and Mel Reid. Taking place just over a month before The 150^th Open Championship, playing the Old Course on a Sunday with the grandstands was a real treat for the competitors.

You can view the full leaderboard here.

Scorecard and stats from round 1

Scorecard and stats from round 2

Scorecard and stats from round 3

What is noticeable from all 3 rounds is how well Jen putted. Every round she was gaining shots against a scratch golfer on the greens. The second round being the most impressive at 3.61 strokes gained. The final round was also her best day off the tee by some way. Despite hitting some longer drives in R1 and R2, Jen gained just over 2 shots against a scratch golfer on the Old Course on Sunday.

Individual Hole Highlights

Some individual hole highlights from the final round. 9 iron was the club for Jen on the final stretch, playing a little downwind and firm she hit a 9 iron on 15 to 1 inch, then a 9 iron to 12ft on 17. These three holes played a part in her covering the last 6 holes in 5 under par – a great bounce back from the 7 she made on the par 3 11th.

The Quadruple!!

With Shot Scope, there’s no hiding the bad shots! V3 tracked all 7 of Jen’s shots on the Par 3 11th on the Old Course. Playing into the wind, this is always a tricky par 3 tee shot. Jen’s tee shot drifted into the bunker left and after a failed attempt going out towards the pin, she played out backwards and had 66yards for her 4th shot. Pitched on and went on to 3 putt.

Strokes Gained for 2022 v St Rule Trophy

The phone screen on the left shows Jen’s strokes gained for 2022 to date, which is around 30 rounds of golf. You can see that it is usually off the tee that lets her down. Comparing this against the 3 tournament rounds for the St Rule Trophy (middle image), you can see that Jen hit it better off the tee than usual, but also putted incredibly well.

Even comparing her 3 tournament rounds against Tour Players, Jen was gaining shots on the greens. This really shows that in order to do well in tournament golf you really need to be holing lots of putts.

Tee Shots Strokes Gained v 0 HCP

Jen performed well off the tee on the shorter holes, however she lost nearly a full shot on holes between 350-450y. Also it is evident that missing in the right rough cost Jen a full shot and she was 2.5 shots worse missing in the right rough compared to hitting the fairway.

Approach play

Usually a strength of Jen’s game – however this was a weak point for her over the two days. With that being said, the graph on the right shows proximity by club and as you would expect, the smaller the club the closer the proximity is. There are 2 things that stand out here – 1, Jen was hitting her 4 and 5 iron exceptionally close and 2, her 7 and 8 iron were letting her down. For a little context, over the 3 rounds she hit 5 approach shots with her 4, 5 and 7 iron and 7 shots with her 8 iron.

You can see the effect of this on her strokes gained – approaches by distance. The graph is almost the opposite of the proximity one above. Proximity with 7 iron and 8 iron was high and we can see this with approaches from 100-150y costing Jen 0.22 shots against a scratch golfer.

Some stats from all 3 tournament rounds combined

As touched upon earlier, putting is where Jen excelled on the course. Diving into this in more detail we can see that she was particularly good from 0-20ft, gaining nearly 2 full shots on a scratch golfer from these distances.

You can also see Jen’s make % from the various different distances and the % difference between her and a scratch golfer. The stand outs here being the amount she holed from 3-6ft, 6-9ft and 9-12ft.

What can we take from this?

Over the 3 rounds Jen avoided the majority of the trouble that links golf poses. She drove the ball well, kept it out of many fairway bunkers and putted great. If you can do these things well, then you are never going to be far away.

Jen used the Shot Scope V3 GPS + Shot Tracking watch to automatically track each of her shots throughout the tournament. Shot Scope offer a wide range of products, Shot Tracking products that offer game changing statistics about your game (shown in this article), GPS watches and Laser Rangefinders.