Truth In Numbers

When it comes to putting, professional and amateur golfers alike accept as gospel three bits of conventional wisdom: PGA Tour pros are much better putters than amateurs; a Tour player's skill on the greens diminishes with age; and Tour pros make more putts on bentgrass greens than they do on bermuda. An SIGOLF+ analysis of PGA Tour and amateur statistics challenges these popular, but incorrect, notions.

Pros Versus Amateurs

Tour pros are much better putters than amateurs, right? To learn the answer, SIGOLF+ compared the putting of PGA Tour players in 2010 with the putts of more than 1,000 amateurs who were tracked by Shotlink at the Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship from 2006 to '10. Yes, Tour pros are scary good on short putts, but the farther each group gets from the hole, the percentage of success is not unlike that of players like us, and from outside 15 feet pros and amateurs are about equal. The biggest difference between pros and amateurs: three-putt avoidance. The average Tour pro three-putts 2½ times less than even the best amateur.

[The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.]

Key

Tour Avg

Low Hcp (0--5)

Mid Hcp (5--15)

High Hcp (15--25)

25' plus