You have probably played golf with someone who, after shaking your hand on the 18th green, says something like, ‘Well, I managed to play with the same ball for the whole round’?
It’s not really much of a boast, is it? However, if you’ve been struggling with the big stick and need to improve your driver set-up and fundamentals, sometimes playing 18 holes without having to reach into your bag for another golf ball can feel like quite an accomplishment.
In fact, when you look at the statistics, getting round a course without losing a single ball is something that doesn’t happen very often for a lot of golfers. Golf, as we so often say, is hard.
According to Shot Scope, our official data partner, a 15-handicap golfer loses an average of 2.8 golf balls per round.
The number of balls lost during a round of golf can vary significantly based on the difficulty of the course and other factors such as weather conditions.
It’s hard not to picture your own course and wonder whether it sounds about right. In the summer when the rough is up, off the back tees, players are likely to lose more balls.
In the winter, however, with little rough, off the forward tees, you might not find yourself having to reload so often.
However, this data from Shot Scope does at least provide a good idea of how many balls are lost per round by the average golfer - and it gets really interesting when we compare these numbers to players with different handicaps.
For example, and using additional data from Shot Scope, we can see that a 25-handicap golfer loses an average of 5.6 balls per round.
A 5-handicap golfer, meanwhile - a player who’s not just technically better but also someone who normally makes smarter decisions on the course - loses an average of just 0.9 balls per round.
One statistic that probably won’t come as a surprise is that across all skill levels, the majority of lost balls are from the tee.
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What does this tell us? Clearly, high handicap players have a lot to gain by controlling the ball better off the tee.
It’s often said that the quickest way to shoot lower scores is to work on your short game and putting, but if you’re losing nearly four balls per round off the tee, there’s clearly significant room for improvement in the long game department, too.
Even the average player can tidy us in this area, with the data showing us that a 15-handicap player loses an average of 1.9 balls per round off the tee.
These numbers might explain why some golfers don’t play with a premium golf ball. Losing half a dozen of the best golf balls on the market over the course of one round is expensive.
And it probably explains why some golfers play with colored golf balls. If we had the data for the average number of balls lost by players using yellow golf balls, we’d share it.
Our guess is that it would be quite a bit lower compared to those players using white balls.
