OTIS Golf

Glossary

What is Par-5 Scoring?

Average score on par-5 holes, where pros make their biggest gains (tour average is under par).

How it's calculated

These are the tour's published season figures. Scoring average is adjusted for the difficulty of the fields and weeks a player faced, so a season spent on hard courses is not punished relative to one spent on easy ones. The par-3, par-4 and par-5 figures are straight averages over holes of that length.

How to read it

Lower is better, and 5.00 is even par. This is where the biggest separations open up, because reaching in two turns a par into a birdie chance.

What it doesn't say

Averages hide their distribution. Two players with the same scoring average can be built completely differently — one steady, one alternating brilliant and poor rounds — and the average alone will not tell you which. Par-5 scoring in particular is driven by how often a player reaches in two, which is a distance question as much as a scoring one. And an average over a part-season is a smaller sample than it looks.

OTIS tracks this stat across 15 PGA Tour seasons — see it for every player, or read how the numbers are sourced in the methodology.

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