Average Putts Per Round on the PGA Tour

Research Question

How does the average number of putts per round vary among PGA Tour players, and how do the top 25 players compare?

In professional golf, the number of putts taken per round is a fundamental measure of performance on the greens. While top players strive to minimize putts, putting averages vary substantially based on course conditions, green size, and the number of greens hit in regulation. This project investigates how tournament putting averages fluctuate across the PGA Tour and compares the distributions of the world’s leading golfers.

Putting Distributions Across the Tour

The visualization below examines Average Putts Per Round across 26,442 tournament observations from the 2015 through 2023 PGA Tour seasons. Rather than summarizing with only summary boxes, every individual tournament appearance for the top 25 golfers is plotted as an individual point overlaid on their career distribution, set against the tour-wide middle 50% (shaded band) and tour median of 28.75 putts per round (dashed line).

Figure 1: Individual tournament Putts Per Round observations (points) and distributions for the Top 25 PGA Tour golfers compared to the tour-wide baseline.

Key Findings

  • Tour-Wide Baseline: Across all 26,442 tournament rounds analyzed, the median putting performance is 28.75 putts per round, with the middle 50% of tournament appearances falling tightly between 28.00 and 29.75 putts per round.
  • Showing the Real Data: Overlaid points reveal the raw tournament appearances behind each player’s summary statistics, showing sample size differences and the full spread of rounds.
  • Substantial Week-to-Week Variation: Even the top 25 golfers in the world demonstrate considerable tournament-to-tournament variability, frequently spanning from 26 to over 31 putts per round across events.
  • Top 25 Comparisons: Among the top 25 players, golfers such as Sahith Theegala, Wyndham Clark, and Sungjae Im maintain the lowest median putting averages (28.0 to 28.2 putts per round). Conversely, elite ball-strikers such as Collin Morikawa, Keegan Bradley, and Matthieu Pavon register higher median putting averages (29.2 to 29.5 putts per round), demonstrating that top-tier FedExCup finishes can be achieved through outstanding approach and tee-to-green play.

Data Source

The dataset is derived from official PGA Tour ShotLink tournament statistics (Stat 119: Putts Per Round) covering the 2015 through 2023 seasons, compiled via the open-source PGA Tour Stats repository. The dataset contains 26,442 validated tournament observations across 997 professional golfers and 99 tour events, recording each player’s total putts, rounds played, and official average putts per round per tournament.