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Are you an average golfer for your age?

leftshot said:
Many have indicated skepticism in the veracity of the study, or simply wanting to understand who was in the dataset and how the study was conducted. I found the original publication of the study here: https://mygolfspy.com/study-overall-golfer-performance-by-age/ and will be providing my thoughts later today. You are welcome to do the same.
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I'm not a current user of The Grint. So, I'm hoping those of you who are can confirm or correct some of my assumptions about that service.
  1. My Golf Spy describes The Grint as a "golf handicap and stat tracking service". That has always been my understanding too. So I have no idea why they would not use handicapping stats and data, which as many others have noted would yield a much more accurate comparison of golf ability to age than raw average score.
  2. The Grint is available worldwide, uses the World Handicap System and provides a USGA-compliant handicap. However, I could not anywhere find how many golfers keep their handicap on The Grint, nor how many of those people provide hole-by-hole scores to add to the database of detailed stats. Without these stats it is impossible to know the size of the dataset--much less how representative it is of the universe of golfers.
  3. According to Links Magazine "Just under 10 percent of golfers have an official handicap—or slightly more than 2.4 million of the 24.8 million Americans who played at least once on a golf course in 2020." Golf Magazine says that GHIN "has more than 2 million registered golfers". Thus The Grint membership must be <400,000. Probably significantly less given the number of other USGA and WHS compliant services out there. In addition, NGF puts the number of golf participants worldwide at 36.9 million.
Based on what is stated above, here are the preliminary conclusions we can derive.
  • The study was based on a rather specialized and small subset of golfers. Specifically, ONLY those who keep a handicap and do so on The Grint, which represent 1% or less of golfers worldwide.
  • Because of this the study is NOT representative of all golfers in the U.S.--much less the world.
  • The methodology used is both flawed and unexplained introducing a lot of variables that influence the results and could have been eliminated or normalized.
 
Going off of this study then yes. Usually I’m good for shooting around an 89. Not sure I believe the average golfer my age is shooting that though, not that I consider myself above average.
 
Whoever wrote that study needs to book at Saturday tee time at their local muni and see what average is.
 
Luchnia said:
I was looking back at my scoring this year versus last year and where my weaknesses were. I am glad I have improved and I like to keep goals before me. I managed to hang in the 80s for the most part this year - 88.3 average. I was able to attain the handicap goal I set for myself this year, but I did go back up some as the year was ending.

I also was looking at the average scores per age group. My thoughts now are hinging more on how much I want to put into the effort for improvement and what goals that would be. My guess is to get and stay in the low 80s which would not require as much work as trying to break 80 consistently. That would be a tough goal for me as that would be decreasing my games by at least 8 strokes. That would take a lot more hours than I expect I am willing to put in. Maintaining mid 80s might be more doable.

Taken from an article in Golfible below we see some averages. These do compare to most other articles on the Internet of scoring based on age. The minimal stroked differences sort of surprised me. There was not a lot of difference between golfers that had a difference age span of 30 or more years. There were 2 strokes between 20-30 years old and 30-40, but only 1 stroke from 30-40 age group all the way up to 60-70.

According to a study conducted by mygolfspy.com, the average golf score varies significantly by age.
For golfers 20-30 years old, the average 18 hole golf score is 89.7.
In the 30-40 age range those golfers averaged a round of 91.7.
At 40-50 years old these golfers had an average score of 91.5 per round.
For golfers 50-60 as well as 60-70 the average score per round was a 91.0.
Players over 70 who were in the study had an average of 93.2.

Are you an average golfer for your age?
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My last 20 rounds (going back 3 years, lol-I golf a lot?) my average score is 83.5 and my HC is 4.7. I’m kind of an all or nothing guy. It’s either good or ugly. I have just enough good rounds to keep me low in the HC ranking for my skill level. But if you ever want to see a 4.7HC on legit 100 watch, play a couple rounds with me, lol.
 
I suppose so. By the time you get to my age, all golfers are average.
 
Scores seem way too high, lots of people writing bogey instead of triple. :rolleyes:
 
Snowman said:
I've always had trouble swallowing the USGA's stats too. It's pretty hard for me to believe that over 50% of male golfers with handicaps carry an index of 13.9 or lower.
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I'm the same, 30% of male golfers with a handicap of 9.9 or better? Not sure I'm agreeing with that.
 
At 57, definitely above average with typical score in mid-70s with a pb of 66 this season. Getting better with age it seems, but then again, i have more free time to play, practice and work out since only work about 10 days a month (along with wife working and kids older). One of the big differences that I have found is that my putting has become extremely good. I attest that to having a birdieball mat, a perfect practice mat and putt out pressure trainer all set up in my basement along with a chipping mat and net.
 
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