Shot Scope Unveils Player Performance Report on St. Andrews In Advance of 150th Open Championship – How Do Amateur Golfers Perform on the Historic Old Course?

As World’s Best Golfers Prepare for The Open Championship, Shot Scope Data Highlights How the Old Course Performs for Everyday Players

(Edinburgh, UK) — Shot Scope, the industry-leader in advanced GPS and automatic shot tracking technology, in the lead up to the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews Links, the Home of Golf in Scotland, has unveiled a detailed report analyzing amateur golfers’ performance on the historic Old Course at St. Andrews. 

With the game’s best golf professionals preparing to take on St. Andrews, Shot Scope technology tracked thousands of golfers and hundreds of thousands of shots to determine how amateurs performed on the Old Course compared to other Open Championship courses in the UK. Among the data revealed in the report includes what holes are the hardest, where golfers can expect to make a rare birdie, which green causes the most 3 putts, and where golfers need to hit the ball off the tee in order to score well. 

All of this data and many other insights are available through Shot Scope’s  complete e-book on player performance at St. Andrews via the following link: https://shotscope.com/golf-ebooks/st-andrews-guide/

“With the 150th Open Championship upon us, and as the Old Course at St. Andrews is one of the most desired courses in the world for amateurs to play, we put Shot Scope tracking technology to work in capturing how amateurs play the course and how best to attack the challenging track for golfers preparing to play the historic venue,” said Gavin Dear, Chief Commercial Officer, Shot Scope.  “Our Shot Scope database has over 100,000 golfers from 162 different countries, and we have recorded over 180 million shots to date.  Specific for the St. Andrews study, we tracked 6,780 rounds and over 564,000 shots.”

Dear adds, “Anyone who has watched The Open Championship at St. Andrews knows just how difficult the course can play, so we thought it would be eye-opening to analyze everyday golfers of all levels to determine how they perform on this great golf course, especially in advance of the game’s best taking their turn.”

In building the report, new developments in technology enabled Shot Scope to view a heat map of every hole on the Old Course and analyze exactly where amateur golfers are playing and how they play each hole.  Add to this an array of performance statistics and Shot Scope can identify ground-breaking data on how exactly amateur golfers perform on arguably the most famous golf course in the world. Among the key player performance data uncovered in the report includes the following:

Old Course At St. Andrews … Shot Scope Player Performance Summary

- Average score of 83.2

- Hardest hole = 17th

- Easiest hole = 9th

- Highest FIR and GIR % of all The Open Championship courses

- 3rd easiest course on The Open rota, behind Troon and St. George’s

- Higher handicaps struggle more on the back 9 than lower handicaps

- Green with the most 3 putts = 13th

- Tee shots going OB on 17 and 18 result in average score of 7

- Par 5s are the easiest for low handicaps and hardest for higher handicaps 

Adds Dear, “In addition to the Old Course at St. Andrews, our new proprietary technology allows us to track golfer performance on any course in the world where Shot Scope GPS, laser rangefinders and shot tracking products are used. In fact, on average Shot Scope users improve by 4.1 shots when tracking their game with products such as the V3 GPS Watch, PRO LX+ Rangefinder or H4 Handheld.”

Shot Scope’s Old Course Player Performance Report comes on the heels of the Company launching the innovative PRO LX+ device. A first-of-its-kind rangefinder, the PRO LX+ system includes three devices which are sold as one unit, the PRO LX+, featuring GPS-powered distances and performance tracking, or individually as the PRO LX Rangefinder and H4 Game Tracker. Today, with research showing that modern golfers rely on multiple GPS devices, players of all levels now have one device - PRO LX+ - that provides all of the on-course technology they need in one system. 

“Shot Scope is thrilled to unveil this game-changing device to the golf industry, as we introduce GPS distance and performance tracking technology to laser rangefinder users for the first time ever,” adds Dear “Our V3 Smart Watch was a tremendous success when launched in 2020, and now we are bringing that same artificial intelligence to rangefinders and giving golfers a multi-product system that is offered at a price point for every budget.”

Dear adds, “For rangefinder users, Shot Scope now offers real-time game tracking data like never before, which is currently used by tens of thousands of golfers worldwide recording over 180 million shots. In fact, our data shows that amateur golfers improve by four strokes thanks to the unique fusion of accurate distance information and automatic performance tracking technology from Shot Scope devices.”