Scratch Golfers vs Tour Professionals: How Big Is The Gap?

Many amatuer golfers dream of getting down to scratch in their lifetime - but the elusive goal is not easy to achieve.

The journey is often arduous and fraught with challenges, but perhaps understanding the gap between the pinnacle of the amateur game and the world of tour golf will act as inspiration in your journey to cut your handicap in 2026.

The question is, comparatively speaking, just how good are the players on the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour?

With the help of the latest data from Shot Scope, one of the leaders when it comes to performance analysis tech, we're much closer to finding out the answers. In the video and article below, we break down the data and share the findings.

But, in order to make this comparison, we need a representative for the amateur community - so let’s put our best foot forward and submit a scratch golfer as tribute…

Scratch Golfers vs Tour Pros: The Data

Let's start off at the tee with the driver. A scratch golfer has a driving distance performance average, which removes anomalies, of 285 yards.

This is 17 yards shorter than the average PGA Tour player who drives the ball 302 yards, but much longer than the LPGA Tour player average of 263 yards.

When it comes to tee-shot accuracy though, a scratch golfer falls well short, only finding 48% of fairways with a driver, while for a PGA Tour player, it's 58.45%. For an LPGA Tour player, it jumps up to 67.5%.

Now, let's move on to the greens in regulation. It won't surprise you to know that tour players perform better here, too.

A PGA Tour and LPGA Tour player hit 66% of greens on average, while a scratch golfer only hits 52%.

A scratch golfer's average proximity to the hole on approach shots is also much higher at 62 feet versus 37 feet for a PGA Tour player.

Around the green, the pros are better at scrambling too. A scratch golfer gets up and down 54% of the time from within 50 yards of the green. For PGA Tour players, that rises to 60.72% while LPGA Tour players are at 57.4%.

The differences with a putter are not as stark as the other areas of the course. A scratch player has on average 29.9 putts per round. For a PGA Tour player, it's 28.76 and for an average LPGA Tour player, it's 29.55.

A scratch golfer does fall foul of more three-putts per round, but not by much, at 0.8 versus 0.67 for the LPGA Tour and 0.48 for the PGA Tour.

From short range, Shot Scope scratch golfers hole out from between six to nine feet 48% of the time.

PGA Tour players make their putts from six feet 71% of the time and from nine feet 47% of the time. So, they are clearly more prolific from this crucial holing-out range.

I mean, I never said it would be pretty. This detailed breakdown of how scratch golfers compare with tour players shows the vast and perhaps surprising gap between the two levels.

Getting to scratch is only the start of the (very difficult) journey, the ascent to the summit is something else entirely.