Retrieving Player Details and Statistics

This integration scenario explains how to retrieve player biographical information, historical tournament results, and seasonal performance statistics using the Sportradar Golf API. It focuses on discovering players, accessing detailed player profiles, and pulling season-level statistics for analysis or display.

This scenario is commonly used to:

• Build player profile pages with biographical details and career history
• Display season-level performance statistics and rankings
• Power player comparison features
• Drive scouting, fantasy, or analytical applications

Overview

In the Golf API, player data is distributed across several feeds. Some feeds focus on biographical and identifying information (height, country, birthday), while others focus on performance data (tournament history, season statistics, world ranking). Most player-centric integrations require combining data from multiple feeds.

Before You Start: Player Data Availability

Player data availability varies by tour and feed:

• The Players feed returns biographical information for participants on a specified tour and season
• The Player Profile feed returns biographical info plus historical tournament results and season statistics for a single player
• The Player Statistics feed returns season-level statistics for all players who earned FedEx Cup points, and is available for the PGA Tour only
• The Official World Golf Ranking feed returns rankings and OWGR points for the top 200 players globally

Relevant Feeds

The following feeds are used when retrieving player details and statistics:

High-Level Workflow

A typical player data integration follows this flow:

Players → Player IDs → Player Profile / Player Statistics → World Rankings

1. Discover players for a given tour and season
2. Extract player.id values
3. Retrieve detailed profiles or aggregate statistics
4. Optionally enrich with world ranking data

Integration Steps

1. Discover Players

Start by calling the Players feed to retrieve biographical information for all players who participated on a given tour during a given season.

GET https://api.sportradar.com/golf/{access_level}/{golf_tour}/v3/{language_code}/{season_year}/players/profiles.{format}

{
  "tour": {
    "id": "b52068af-28e4-4e91-bdbb-037591b0ff84",
    "alias": "pga",
    "name": "PGA Tour",
    "currency": "USD"
  },
  "season": {
    "id": "55827590-93f7-4493-9b4f-83ae86116ef6",
    "year": 2024
  },
  "players": [
    {
      "id": "7d470d98-95a1-42a5-b5eb-39bd2259ac5f",
      "first_name": "Seung-Yul",
      "last_name": "Noh",
      "height": 73,
      "weight": 165,
      "birthday": "1991-05-29T00:00:00+00:00",
      "country": "SOUTH KOREA",
      "residence": "Seoul,, KOR",
      "birth_place": "Gangwon-do,, KOR",
      "college": "Korea",
      "turned_pro": 2007,
      "handedness": "R",
      "abbr_name": "S.Noh",
      "name": "Noh, Seung-Yul",
      "gender": "male"
    }
  ]
}

The Players feed returns:

• Player names and IDs
• Biographical info (birthday, country, residence, college)
• Physical attributes (height, weight, handedness)
• Tour and season context

Each player includes a unique player.id, which is required for retrieving detailed profile data and connecting players across other feeds.

Why this matters

• Provides the canonical list of players for a given tour and season
• Establishes the player.id values needed for downstream requests
• Surfaces new player records as players make their first appearance on tour

2. Retrieve a Player Profile

Use the Player Profile feed to retrieve biographical info, historical tournament results, and season-level statistics for a single player.

GET https://api.sportradar.com/golf/{access_level}/v3/{language_code}/players/{player_id}/profile.{format}

{
  "id": "da226913-b804-48de-adbf-96e956eb75ac",
  "first_name": "Rory",
  "last_name": "McIlroy",
  "height": 70,
  "weight": 160,
  "birthday": "1989-05-04",
  "country": "NORTHERN IRELAND",
  "residence": "Holywood,, IRL",
  "turned_pro": 2007,
  "handedness": "R",
  "abbr_name": "R.McIlroy",
  "previous_tournaments": [
    {
      "id": "459e9ffb-1eb4-422c-9f13-1ba8344c35aa",
      "name": "Masters Tournament",
      "start_date": "2024-04-11",
      "end_date": "2024-04-14",
      "leaderboard": {
        "position": 22,
        "tied": true,
        "money": 175500.0,
        "points": 73.0,
        "score": 4,
        "strokes": 292
      }
    }
  ],
  "statistics": [
    {
      "events_played": 8,
      "top_10": 1,
      "top_25": 6,
      "cuts_made": 8,
      "points": 575.0,
      "earnings": 1714672.0,
      "drive_avg": 314.2,
      "gir_pct": 65.23,
      "world_rank": 2,
      "scoring_avg": 70.769
    }
  ]
}

The Player Profile feed returns:

• Full biographical information
• Historical tournament results (with leaderboard position and round-by-round scoring)
• Season-level statistics across one or more seasons

Use this feed when you need a comprehensive view of a single player.

3. Retrieve Season Statistics for All Players

Use the Player Statistics feed when you need season-level statistics for every player who earned FedEx Cup points in a given season.

GET https://api.sportradar.com/golf/{access_level}/{golf_tour}/v3/{language_code}/{season_year}/players/statistics.{format}

{
  "tour": {
    "id": "b52068af-28e4-4e91-bdbb-037591b0ff84",
    "alias": "pga",
    "name": "PGA Tour",
    "currency": "USD"
  },
  "season": {
    "id": "55827590-93f7-4493-9b4f-83ae86116ef6",
    "year": 2024
  },
  "players": [
    {
      "id": "7a6e9b42-1b44-4e97-b583-2eb7bda9a68b",
      "first_name": "Jorge",
      "last_name": "Campillo",
      "country": "SPAIN",
      "abbr_name": "J.Campillo",
      "statistics": {
        "events_played": 7,
        "cuts_made": 4,
        "points": 58.0,
        "points_rank": 153,
        "earnings": 142090.0,
        "earnings_rank": 161,
        "drive_avg": 295.3,
        "drive_acc": 60.74,
        "gir_pct": 61.42,
        "putt_avg": 1.759,
        "world_rank": 121,
        "scoring_avg": 71.002,
        "strokes_gained_total": 0.226
      }
    }
  ]
}

The Player Statistics feed returns:

• Season totals (events played, cuts made, top-10 finishes, earnings)
• Performance averages (driving distance, accuracy, GIR %, scoring average)
• FedEx Cup points and rankings
• Strokes gained metrics

Use this feed when you need to compare or rank players across a season.

⚠️

Player Statistics Feed Availability

The Player Statistics feed is only available for the PGA Tour (pga). For other tours, use the Player Profile feed to retrieve season statistics on a per-player basis.

Player Profile is a near-complete fallback: its per-season statistics block carries the same metrics as Player Statistics except cuts and withdrawals (it does include cuts_made). The trade-off is shape rather than depth: Player Statistics returns the whole field in one call with cross-player ranks, while Player Profile is one player per call.

4. Enrich with World Rankings

Use the Official World Golf Ranking feed to retrieve OWGR rankings and points for the top 200 players globally, regardless of tour affiliation.

GET https://api.sportradar.com/golf/{access_level}/v3/{language_code}/players/wgr/{season_year}/rankings.{format}

{
  "id": "304406bf-99b9-494d-953a-c8a798b8a78f",
  "name": "World Golf Ranking",
  "alias": "WGR",
  "season": 2024,
  "players": [
    {
      "id": "6db3e736-d86d-4181-aa3b-651b8c1bfdc1",
      "first_name": "Scottie",
      "last_name": "Scheffler",
      "country": "UNITED STATES",
      "rank": 1,
      "prior_rank": 1,
      "abbr_name": "S.Scheffler",
      "statistics": {
        "events_played": 51,
        "avg_points": 10.29,
        "points": 524.92201
      }
    }
  ]
}

The OWGR runs on a rolling two-year schedule, so a given season's ranking reflects performance accumulated across that window. Use this feed to:

• Display global ranking on player profile pages
• Compare players across tours
• Track ranking movement using rank and prior_rank

5. Track Player and Statistics Changes

Player records and statistics are updated regularly, particularly after tournament play and during weekly stat validation.

Use the Daily Change Log to detect updates without repeatedly pulling full player or statistics payloads.

GET https://api.sportradar.com/golf/{access_level}/{golf_tour}/v3/{language_code}/{year}/{month}/{day}/changes.{format}

The Daily Change Log surfaces:

• Updated player records (players[].id)
• Updated season statistics (statistics[].id)
• Updated tournament participants (participants[].id)

Use these IDs to selectively refresh only the records that have changed.

Common Use Cases

Typical builds on this workflow include:

• Building player profile pages with biographical details and career history
• Displaying season-level leaderboards by points, earnings, or strokes gained
• Powering player comparison and head-to-head views
• Driving fantasy applications with up-to-date player performance data
• Surfacing world rankings on tournament detail pages
• Aggregating multi-season player performance for analytical use cases

Best Practices

• Use the Players feed to discover player.id values before requesting profile or statistics data
• Choose between Player Profile (single player, deep detail) and Player Statistics (all PGA Tour players, season-level) based on your use case
• Cache player biographical data and refresh according to the update frequency
• Treat player.id as the primary key for connecting player data across all Golf API feeds
• Use the Daily Change Log to detect targeted updates rather than repeatedly polling full payloads
• Remember that Player Statistics is PGA Tour only, fall back to Player Profile for other tours