It’s that time of year again where I begin to reflect on my APBA Golf playing experiences. In this post I share some course stats from all the rounds I’ve recorded using the men’s APBA cards (i.e., PGA players). I also offer my perspective on why some of the numbers are what they are.
The stats I’m talking about cover all the rounds I’ve played (most alone and some with others) since June 2020. To make comparisons more meaningful, I have only included those courses where I have played more than 20 rounds. (The range is 21 to 311 rounds per course for a total of 2,478 rounds played on 16 courses.)
The most difficult course in this dataset is Acorn Hill (Oak Hill), averaging 2.2. strokes over par. The easiest is Los Angeles (Riviera) coming in at 2.4 strokes under par. The full set of course rankings is shown below.
Before diving any deeper into the course numbers, I need to say something about the APBA card sets upon which they are based. I have logged some rounds of APBA golf with every All-Time Great (ATG) player and all of the season cards from 2015 – 2023. I’ve also played with some of the cards from the sets that are available for seasons from 1941 to 1992.
Which cards were used on which courses varies greatly. For example, most of the rounds played on Acorn Hill are from the 2023 PGA season 80-card set, while most of the rounds played on Los Angeles are from the original ATG 144-card set. Could that account for the lower scores on Los Angeles? Probably, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.
As I’ve written about before, Acorn Hill is a very challenging course to score well on. It has narrow fairways, sand traps that protect every green (including many deep bunkers), a 7-iron restriction and 6-line Scramble Adjustment for lies in the regular rough, and numerous hole-specific rules that increase putting difficulty. Los Angeles has almost none of these challenges.
Note the difference in FW%: 49.3% for Acorn Hill and 65.3% for LA. The same pattern exists for GIR%: 54.7% for Acorn Hill and 66.2% for LA. Furthermore, Acorn Hill averages 29.0 putts per round, while LA is only 27.8.
The bottom line of the report shows the overall averages (weighted for numbers of rounds played per course). On average, these 16 courses play 0.8 strokes over par. Seaside (Pebble Beach) is listed twice, since I sometimes play it as a par 72 and other times as a par 71. Overall, the average FW% is 62.1%, average GIR% is 59.8% with an average of 28.7 putts per round.
In terms of penalty strokes, Seaside (either par rating) and The Stadium Course (TPC Sawgrass) are the most punitive with an average of 1.0 penalty strokes per round. The crazy wind rules for Seaside and The Stadium Course’s infamous “Island Green” at #17, no doubt, contribute to that.
At 65.6%, Sand Saves have come easiest at Empire (Bethpage Black). Compare that to Birthplace (St. Andrews) which has a SS% of 29.1%. The overall course average is 51.8%. Empire has no deep bunkers and almost all the traps within 100 yards of the pin are green-adjacent. Birthplace, on the other hand, has multitudes of deep bunkers all over the place and harsh consequences if you don’t make a clean shot out.
One of the newer stats I’ve been tracking is Average Driving Distance measured in two different ways. In this report I only show the Average Driving Distance for tee shots on all par 4’s and 5’s. (The other way is by selecting just two holes–one on the front nine and one on the back.) Missing data means I haven’t recorded Average Driving Distance for that course yet.
Pacific Canyon (Torrey Pines South) leads all others with an Average Driving Distance of 291.5 yards. Yatch Club (Harbour Town), with its many tree-lined doglegs, has the shortest at 250.0 yards. The overall average is 278.9 yards. These numbers are well below real Average Driving Distances for today’s players.
Green size makes a difference when it comes to the number of putts per round. Seaside, with it’s postage stamp-sized greens, recorded the fewest at 26.9. Meanwhile, Birthplace, with its enormous putting surfaces, has the most at 31.6 per round. The average is 28.7.
Larger greens also contribute to longer made putts. Badger Links (Whistling Straits) has the longest Total Made Putt Distance at 92.2 feet per round on average. Ayrshire (Royal Troon) has the shortest at 73.5 feet. That is likely due to a combination of small green size and several other factors that make it hard to hit Ayrshire’s greens in regulation (GIR% = 51.4%). The overall average is 84.2 feet per round.
Since the statistical differences are small, I’ll forego an analysis of average hole results other than to make one comment. A lot of the rounds I played early on were on some of the older APBA courses like Yatch Club, where the average Triple Bogey (or worse) is 0.2 per round. That number is likely inflated because I was not using a drop area after tee shots went into the water–an easy thing to have happen when the wind is up. After ATG player Ralph Guldahl hit 3 in-a-row from the tee into the drink on Yatch Club hole #4, a 200-yard par 3, I decided to create my own drop areas (which, I believe, is a more realistic way of handling such situations).
In a future post I’ll perform a similar course analysis from an LPGA player perspective.
Thank you for this detailed summary of your APBA golf rounds, Scott! We are interested to see stats on the LPGA rounds.
Fun info Scott. For 2025, you should add Hamptons (Shinnecock) and Jersey Pines (Pine Valley). Hamptons in Blustery winds is hard to break 80 with good rolls.
that is awesome… I love just looking at the stats and it can make you understand how to play the course better… the stats tell a story if you look at them… thanks for sharing and your information… Kirk Pfan