Stat Focus: The Old Course at St Andrews

Thousands of golfers use the Golfshake Score Tracker to record their scores and track their stats, taking full advantage of the statistical analysis to provide an insight behind their games. This depth of information has offered us a vast library of data, covering golf courses across the UK, Europe and beyond, capturing just how well the Golfshake Community have played certain layouts, including specific holes and the number of putts taken on each green.

Highlighting the Score Tracker, we focused on a particular venue to kick off our Stat Focus Series. The Old Course at St Andrews is arguably the most famous in the world, possessing a rich and lengthy history that has positioned the Auld Grey Toun as the spiritual Home of Golf, a status underlined by this venerable and influential course having hosted The Open Championship on 29 occasions, with the next staging coming in 2021 for the 150th Open.

Luckily, the Old Course is a public venue and accessible to all, ensuring that a wide variety golfers, including many Golfshake members, have taken the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of legends and play it. But how did they score?

We have analysed rounds tracked by our mid-handicap golfers - between 12 and 19 - to provide a hole-by-hole guide to the course from the yellow tees (6,387 yards), ranking them in terms of difficulty in relation to par. Notably, the Old Course has seven double greens, which span a huge acreage, meaning that golfers are often faced with longer and more difficult putts than they are likely to see elsewhere. So, we have added the average number of putts too. 

17th - 436 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +1.483

Average Putts: 1.981

13th - 388 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +1.157

Average Putts: 2.189

11th - 164 Yards, Par 3

Average Score to Par: +1.079

Average Putts: 2.208

4th - 411 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +1.079

Average Putts: 1.981

1st - 355 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +1.022

Average Putts: 2.151

2nd - 395 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +1.011

Average Putts: 1.868

14th - 523 Yards, Par 5

Average Score to Par: +1.011

Average Putts: 2.057

15th - 391 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.910

Average Putts:  2.075

16th - 345 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.899

Average Putts: 2.075

7th - 349 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.854

Average Putts: 2.057

6th: 360 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.854

Average Putts: 1.925

3rd - 337 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.798

Average Putts: 2.019

12th - 304 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.764

Average Putts: 2.208

10th - 311 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.697

Average Putts: 2.415

8th - 154 Yards, Par 3

Average Score to Par: +0.685

Average Putts: 2.189

18th - 361 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.652

Average Putts: 1.981

5th - 514 Yards, Par 5

Average Score to Par: +0.640

Average Putts: 2.000

9th - 289 Yards, Par 4

Average Score to Par: +0.573

Average Putts: 2.057

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