Most golfers will have heard the expression, ‘You drive for show and putt for dough.’ In other words, it doesn’t matter how well you drive the ball off the tee, it counts for nothing if you can’t get the ball in the hole.
Take Cameron Champ as an example. The American led driving distance on the PGA Tour last year with a healthy average of 322.8 yards off the tee. Less impressive was the number of putts he took per round, with an average of 29.82 only good enough for 171st spot.
We should make the point that statistics alone don’t always tell the full story of how a has performed, and at times they can be misleading. However, this one statistic might partly explain why Champ missed so many cuts in 2024 and ended up losing his PGA Tour card.
We’ll all have had rounds where we struck the ball well tee to green, only to somehow walk off the 18th with 28 points - and a lot of the time it’s because we’ve frittered shots away with the putter.
Many of us would like to trade places with Champ, not least because of how far he can drive the golf ball. Compared to the average club golfer, an average of 29.82 putts per round is very good. On the PGA Tour, however, Sam Burns averaged more than two putts per round better last year - a significant difference.
So, how many putts does the average golfer take per 18 holes? We’ve had a look at the numbers supplied by our official data partner, Shot Scope, and if we call the ‘average amateur’ a 15-handicapper, that number is 32.1 putts per round.
If we break these stats down further, we get a bigger picture of how a typical 15-handicap golfer performs on the greens: 2.1 putts per green in regulation; 29% 1-putt percentage; 60% 2-putt percentage; 11% 3-putt percentage; and 9.7 average number of holes per 3-putt.
How does this compare to a scratch golfer? Again, using data supplied by Shot Scope, the numbers are as follows: 29.9 putts per round; 1.85 putts per green in regulation; 34% 1-putt percentage; 62% 2-putt percentage; 3% 3-putt percentage; and 35.7 average number of holes per 3-putt.
