How About These Incredible Masters Stats?

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Congratulations to Rory McIlroy on a hard fought defense of his Green Jacket yesterday in Augusta. While it may have seemed like the event was over on Friday evening, the Masters has a way of never making victory too easy for any golfer. As many of you may know I love statistics and while Masters.com doesn’t share all the data they collect, but they do share a few of the basics and there are quite a few very interesting observations…

David Cannon/Getty

David Cannon/Getty

Driving Distance:

  • Rory McIlroy led the field at an astounding average of 334 yards per tee shot!

  • The most interesting observation here was that Russell Henley, who finished 3rd and two shots back, averaged only 290 yards per tee shot. He was 44 yards behind McIlroy on every par 4/5, effectively making the course he played 600+ yards longer than the one Rory played.

Driving Accuracy:

  • Of the 54 players who made the cut Aaron Rai led the way with a whopping 50 out of 56 fairways! And that’s at 295 yards per drive.

  • Interestingly Rory hit more fairways than only one player (31 out of 56) and still managed to get the job done.

Putting:

  • Rory finished 5th in the putting metric that ANGC shared, giving us insight into a very different event for the 6-time Major winner. He won this event with his putting and short game - something he typically does not do.

  • Jordan Spieth hit the ball beautifully but putted very poorly (53rd out of 54). I like to think this could be an indicator that Jordan might be trending as we know he can figure the putting out.

  • There were three players who tied for the most three putts at 5 - Noren, Brennan and Schauffele. Not too bad for 72 holes on those surfaces!

Greens in Regulation:

  • This is always an important stat in my book and here Rory was 21st. Another clear indication that the wedges and putter were the primary weapons behind his victory.

  • Xander led the field with 56 out of 72 greens in regulation and interestingly enough Jordan Spieth was second out of the 54 players to make the cut with 55. Take note!

Birdies:

  • It’s no surprise that Rory led the field here with 24 birdies. He made three more birdies than the second place golfer in Hideki Matsuyama.

  • Scottie Scheffler only managed to make more birdies, 12, than 5 of the 54 players who made the cut! (He did make two eagles)

  • On the par 5’s Rory made the most (10), but was tied with Russell Henley! It’s incredible to me that a golfer who drives the ball 290 can play 16 par fives that all measure longer than 545 and make 10 birdies. That is some serious ball striking!

  • While Scottie did make two eagles, he only managed 3 birdies on the par 5’s - the lowest of any player in the field. In fact, he played the two back nine par 5’s (13 & 15) in one OVER par!

All in all it was another riveting edition of the Masters. I hope this slightly deeper look into the numbers that led to the final results was interesting to you.

Thanks for reading!