Have you ever wondered how good scratch golfers actually are and how they might fare on the PGA Tour against some of the best players in the world? Well in this video, Dan Parker takes a look at how the stats compare with these two types of player with the help of Arccos Golf to see exactly where the differences lie.
00:00Some non-golvers can be forgiven for thinking that a scratch handicapper is equal to a tour professional,
00:05but the truth is there is miles between the two.
00:11So thanks to numbers from Arcos Golf gleaned from some 800 million real shots,
00:17we've been able to take the stats from scratch golfers, 0.0 index golfers,
00:22and compare them against PGA Tour stats to see how big that golf is.
00:27And spoiler warning, it's pretty big.
00:30So let's start with driving.
00:35Let's do distance first between this scratch golfer and tour professional.
00:39We're going to do average tour stats to start.
00:42So a scratch golfer averages 259 yards off the tee,
00:46which would leave them an awful, awful long way back of the average player on the PGA Tour.
00:52And that average is 299.9 yards, so let's just call it 300, shall we?
00:57Meaning scratch players are going to be, on average, just over 40 yards back from their PGA Tour counterparts.
01:04Now, if we then look at that comparison between the longest player on tour, which in 22-23 was Rory McIlroy,
01:10he averaged 326 yards.
01:14So that scratch player would now be about 66 yards behind McIlroy on average,
01:18which is such a huge difference when you think about the irons they'll be hitting into the green,
01:22how far back they are on par fours and par fives, and which par fours and par fives become reachable.
01:28Now, let's look at driving accuracy, and unsurprisingly, once again, the tour pros are much more accurate.
01:36The scratch golfer will find a fairway 51% of the time, which is pretty good,
01:41but the average PGA Tour professional is hitting just under 60, so nearly 10% more there.
01:48During the 2023 season, it was Russell Henley who was the most accurate, and he hit a whopping 72% of fairways across a season, which is pretty huge.
01:58So, ultimately, that driving distance is a huge, huge gulf, while the accuracy of about 10% is pretty significant too.
02:10Right then, next up, let's check greens in regulation approach play.
02:14So, not only are these players now, PGA Tour pros, about 40 yards further up the hole than their scratch counterpart,
02:21but they're hitting more greens too, probably because they're a bit closer on average,
02:25depending on the courses they're playing.
02:26But let's look at the stats. The scratch golfer hits an average of 56% of greens in regulation,
02:31while the PGA Tour average is 66.32.
02:36So, 10% difference there, again, similar to driving accuracy we just looked at.
02:41For some context about who's doing that on the tour at the minute,
02:44world number one at the time of recording,
02:46Scotty Scheffler led the Tour in greens in regulation last year,
02:50and for the past two years, in fact.
02:52So, two years ago, it was 72.29%,
02:56and in 2023, 74.43% of greens hit.
03:01I'm a single-index golfer, and to me, scratch golfers are like, wow,
03:05I'm nowhere near them, and they're nowhere near these PGA Tour players at the end of the day.
03:09So, for Scotty Scheffler, that equates to 13.4 greens in regulation per round,
03:14whereas scratch golfers are averaging just over 10.
03:17So, we're on the green now, and we're putting,
03:23but what is the difference between scratch and tour pros here?
03:27Now, we're going to look at number of one putts, number of three putts,
03:31and then total putts per round on average between these two players.
03:34So, let's start with three putts.
03:36The scratch golfer averages 1.3, three putts per round, which is still pretty low,
03:41whereas the PGA Tour average at the minute stands at 0.49,
03:45which is less than a three putt every other round.
03:48Now, the best for this last year on the PGA Tour was Aaron Baddeley.
03:52Do you remember him?
03:53Not seen him for a while.
03:54However, he averaged just 0.24 three putts per round last season of the Tour,
04:01which is one every what?
04:03Less than one every four, which is pretty crazy to think.
04:06Such a huge goal between these two players at the minute.
04:09Let's look at one putts per round then.
04:11So, zero-digit golfers are one putting 5.2 times per round on average,
04:16which still falls well short of the PGA Tour average, which was 7.07 in 2023.
04:23Now, topping the rankings for that on the Tour was Taylor Montgomery,
04:26who averaged 8.29 one putts per round.
04:29And Montgomery also topped the putts per round statistics with an average of 27.38.
04:35Now, that stat is almost 1.7 lower than the Tour average, which is 29.02 putts per round,
04:42with scratch golfers averaging 30.7 putts per round.
04:46So, about 1.7 more putts than the average Tour pro from last year.
04:51And they add up, really, don't they?
04:53The amount of three putts, the amount of one putts, and those total putts per round,
04:56show you those sort of differences between scratch players and those Tour pros.
05:04So, lastly then, when we're comparing these two golfers,
05:07and I want to just pause for a minute and think about what the actual handicap differences are
05:11between a scratch golfer and a Tour pro.
05:13So, the average handicap of the current PGA Tour players is predicted at around plus 5.4.
05:20So, we're talking five and a half shot difference between your scratch player here.
05:23Tiger Woods in 2008, his handicap was estimated to be plus 11 or plus 12.
05:28I know Jon Rahms on the World Handicap System was predicted to be around this 18 months ago.
05:34So, we've seen the golf in areas of the game and the stats,
05:37and we can see that ultimately leads to about five shots per round.
05:40That's the key difference there.
05:42But let's finally look at scoring totals, right?
05:45What happens in birdies and bogeys and how each type of player plays on par 3s, 4s and 5s, right?
05:51So, start with scoring. Tour pros, shock horror, pick up more birdies,
05:56and bogey, less than scratch golfers, but how many?
05:59So, the Tour leader last year for birdies per round was Ludwig.
06:03Aubert, 4.76 per round, which is pretty whopping,
06:08and that's well over double the amount a scratch player will make, which is 2.2.
06:12The Tour average for birdies in a minute is 3.72,
06:15so that still gives you 1.5 more birdies per round for a PGA Tour pro than a scratch player.
06:21So, for bogeys, the story's very, very similar.
06:24If you look at a scratch player, they're making two more bogeys per round than the PGA Tour pros,
06:29and 2.8 more than the PGA Tour leader,
06:32which last year was Scotty Scheffler making just 1.82 bogeys per round,
06:38which is kind of mad to think really, isn't it?
06:39But I guess when they're driving it accurately, hitting that many greens,
06:42it's going to happen, isn't it?
06:43If we look at the scoring on par 3s, 4s and 5s,
06:49it's actually very similar here, which I found really interesting when we dived into this.
06:53So, on par 3s, a scratch golfer average is 3.1,
06:57a PGA Tour average is 3.06, so that's pretty negligible.
07:02Par 4s, a bit more of a golf here, scratch golfers average 4.2,
07:07the pros average 4.03, so just a hair over par on those par 4s.
07:13Finally then, on the par 5s, this is where both scratch and pro golfers take advantage of golf courses
07:22and start scoring a bit better, but the pros do it marginally better again.
07:25So, the par 5 average for a scratch golf is 4.7, whereas it's 4.63 for the PGA Tour Pro.
07:32So, we can kind of see there where the scoring chips away and it feels, to me at least,
07:37like the biggest difference, and we all knew there was one anyway,
07:40but the biggest difference is that driving distance, huge amount of driving distance.
07:44And I guess when these pros are playing much longer courses, much tighter courses,
07:48that does play to their advantage.
07:50But I think ultimately, although we knew the differences were big between these two players,
07:55the stats from Arcos have shown us they're perhaps even bigger than we initially thought.
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