Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of rounds on Birthplace (St. Andrews) under near-ideal conditions and getting scores that are quite a bit lower than usual for me. The beginning of a new year is a time for reflection, so it got me to wondering: What are the best and worst rounds I’ve had so far?
I’ve been keeping stats in the Game Caddie Record Book only as far back as June 2020, but I’ve logged a total of 1332 rounds on 13 different APBA courses since then. All of these were played according to the full set of Master Game rules and using various versions of the Game Caddie.
The entire list is too long to share here, but here are my 10 Best Rounds Relative to Par (including ties):
As you can see Bryson DeChambeau (2020) has the lowest overall score (61) and lowest score relative to par (-11). This occurred during the second round of my 2020 Players Championship replay on The Stadium Course (TPC Sawgrass). He ultimately won that APBA tournament by 4 strokes, finishing at 19 under par.
Not unexpectedly, less wind tends to favor lower scores. Eight of the 13 best scores were played under Calm conditions.
By contrast, here are my 10 Worst Rounds Relative to Par (including ties):
As Tom Watson (1977) might attest, Calm conditions are no guarantee you’ll shoot well. He holds the record for my worst round of all-time (so far) at 14 over on Gopher Lakes (Hazeltine National). But there have been other bad days as well. While wind can be a factor, poor putting almost always plays a part. Although in Watson’s case, he only had 31 putts that day but couldn’t find the fairways (35.7%) or greens (33.3%) to save his life.
My overall scoring average is slightly above par (+0.72 strokes), with an average of 72.02 strokes per round. I probably play more aggressively than is smart with those APBA golfers whose cards I don’t expect much from. A more conservative approach might shave a stroke or two off my average. But you know what I always say: “Grip it and rip it!”