English Golfers Shoot Five Over Handicap On Average In Return To Golf

Golfers in England returned to the fairways on Monday 29th March after 12 weeks without the game due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

And new data shows that, unsurprisingly, we were a little bit rusty.

The average score came in at +21.71, compared to an average of +14.35 last year, according to data from Shot Scope.

This was, on average, +5.23 over handicap.

Shot Scope recorded more than 446,000 shots on the return to golf as restrictions eased; a figure that represents its largest amount of tracked shots on a single day in England.

This correlated to 4,788 rounds played in the country, eclipsing the previous daily record by over 2,500, while a Shot Scope watch was used to track performance at over 75% of courses.

Shot Scope was also able to see that just 30% of users found the fairway with their opening tee shot, down 18% on average, and 39% of players missed the fairway to the right.

A huge 94% of Shot Scope users, who opened on a par 4 or 5, hit their opening shot with a driver.

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The majority of users struggled more than usual off the tee but it was on the greens where the biggest dip in performance came according to new strokes gained data.

Golfers lost over 40% more shots due to poor putting performance against the Shot Scope average for 2020, with strokes gained putting against a scratch golfer dropping from an average of -3.52 to -5.08.

The numbers did show, however, that golfers were getting back into the swing of things by the back nine, with scoring dropping by 4.03 on the inward half.

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“With the systems we have in place, our team were able to quickly extract the data to provide a snapshot of what the first day back on the course looked like for Shot Scope users throughout the country,” commented Shot Scope CEO, David Hunter.

“The stats made for some very interesting reading.”

Stats: Shot Scope