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I’m a person who loves statistics and the seemingly useless attachment of numbers to results. For example: Did you know every single baseball player who played for the Atlanta Braves and was nicknamed “Crime Dog” hit 493 homeruns? Or that 0% of the characters from Napoleon Dynamite are French Emperors or made of trinitrotoluene? Well, while feeding my numerical urges I stumbled across some pretty useFUL numbers that relate to what some golfers view as The Holy Grail, shooting a 79.

This information comes from Peter Sanders, the creator of the complete game analysis website www.shotbyshot.com. There have been over 200,000 rounds entered through Peter’s site and he used data from 18,000 different rounds in which male amateurs were able to break the ethereal plane of 80 to card the elusive 79. So let’s take a look at the data.

Fairways hit: 8/14. This means you only have to hit 57% of your fairways! Now I’m not saying you can bomb every other shot two fairways right, matter of fact the stats only allow for one penalty or punch out, but you don’t need to be playing from the center stripe every single time.

Greens in Regulation: 8/18. From barely over half of the fairways to less than half of the greens. You only have to reach 44% of the greens in regulation to be exact. Again, this doesn’t mean you can shank one off of your partners cart or chunk one into a pond. It assumes that 80% of your missed approach shots (8/10) fall within 50 yards of the green.

Scrambling: 3/8. Let’s narrow the focus even more. Of those eight shots you left within 50 yards you only have to get up and down for par on a measly 38%! I know it sounds repetitive but I’m not giving you carte blanche to go Happy Gilmore and four putt your other five opportunities.

Putting: 32 total putts. Here’s the toughest hurdle for most players. 32 putts equates to one putting four different times. However further examination shows that on average each player also three putted once in the round which forces you to one putt an additional hole. That brings the total to five holes where you must one putt. That’s more than 25% of your entire round.

I hope this lends some perspective on what it takes to get into the seventies. You don’t have to shoot lights out, but just can’t blow up.

Cheers,

Marty

Source: Peter Sanders – www.shotbyshot.com, Max Adler – Golf Digest Vol. 64 No.7