The 152nd Open Championship – Royal Troon

28 June 2024

Ahead of The 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon, we have pulled on-course performance data to provide insight into how amateur golfers navigate The Open venue.

The last time The Open visited Royal Troon, Ayrshire, Scotland it was Sweden’s Henrik Stenson who would be crowned the Champion Golfer of the Year after a grueling duel with the 2013 Champion Phil Mickelson.

You can watch the final round extended highlights here:

A final round of -8, 63, would see Stenson raise the Claret Jug on Sunday after a truly remarkable final round – hopefully this year’s tournament has a similar level of excitement!

Amateur’s at Royal Troon.

Here are some general stats from all handicaps and tee boxes to give an overview of the course:

From the Shot Scope users that have recorded rounds at Royal Troon, we can see that they typically shoot around 80/81 on the par 71 course, averaging +9.6 to par.

Typically off the tee, players hit 52% of the fairways which is marginally more than our handicap benchmarks hit on average, only by a couple of percent, so off the tee you should not be intimidated.

Shot Scope Tee Shot Handicap Benchmarks

It could be argued that the area of the game that could make or break the scorecard around Royal Troon is the approach play/iron play with GIR% at 38%. As we have learned in our Par 3s blog, they can cause major issues.

As with all courses, the key to scoring lies in GIR with players typically two putting (1.95) once on the green – that may not be revolutionary insight. However, with the GIR% so low at 38%, we can see how players could quickly run up a high score.

Shot Scope Tip for Royal Troon: ignore pins and aim for the middle of the green – especially on par 3s.

Why do we emphasise Par 3s? The stats below:

As soon as players miss the green on the par 3s, they make a bogey with the likelihood of getting up and down around 1 in 4 to 1 in 3.

With where the holes are positioned in the running order of the course, they can kill any momentum you may be building up, especially if you find the sand.

The Postage Stamp has the lowest average score when hitting the green, but the highest when players miss it – at 123yds this hole should send shivers down your spine.

We analysed on amateur on course performance data for all the par 3s at Royal Troon and its fair to say, there could be some Par 3 Problems at Royal Troon for the recreational golfer.

If you are playing Royal Troon anytime soon, having exact distances to the pin are paramount and our laser rangefinders offer just that, precise distances instantly. Or perhaps, you want to see an overhead map of every hole on your wrist so you can plot your way around, select GPS watches like the V5 and X5 have what you are looking for.

Note the two watches offer a different type of hole map

A game of two halves at Royal Troon

From the Shot Scope database we have also compared some top-level statistics for the front and back nine which has revealed some interesting stats.

All of the stats suggest the back nine plays harder than the front nine with the exception of 1% more fairways hit – plays a stroke harder on average, 10% fewer greens hit, fewer up and downs, and more putts per GIR.

So the Postage Stamp can trip you up before the turn and then you have to tackle the hardest hole on the course. From the Shot Scope database, our users play the 10th hole on average, +0.78 strokes to par, the highest of any hole.

Then, to make matters worse, the hardest hole based on Stroke Index, the 11th is up next, which Shot Scope users play +0.57 strokes to par – a real double whammy!

The takeaway message from Royal Troon? Be ready for a true test of your ability!

Plan your optimal strategy for Royal Troon with the free-to-use Shot Scope MyStrategy feature. Our performance tracking users can overlay their on course data on every hole to see how they would tackle this year’s The Open Championship venue.

Note: average handicap index for this dataset is 8.2

_{Featured / cover image credit: Shot Scope}