What Is A Good Number Of Putts For 18 holes?

Like all players out there, you’ve probably walked off the golf course and rued your putting. Maybe you’ve blamed not breaking your personal best on missing too many putts, or maybe it’s just that you simply took too many putts. The question is how many putts should you be looking to make during an 18-hole round? Or rather, what is a good number of putts for 18 holes of golf?

The importance of putting

Many people think that to make good scores, you have to drive the ball like a pro, never miss a fairway and flush your irons every time. It’s true, consistent driving and strong iron play can help your scoring no end, but the real scoring is done on the green.

Ask any professional or any scratch player and they will tell you that strong putting makes all the difference. Two-time major winner and former world number one Dustin Johnson once said that the difference between a ten handicapper and a really good scratch player is putting, that’s it.

If you can putt well, you’ve always got a chance of scoring well, it’s as simple as that. You may not be the best driver of a ball, or the purest ball striker, but you’ll always find a way to the green, and if you putt consistently well, you’ll shoot good scores.

Avoid the three-putt

If you’ve played even just a little bit of golf, you’ll know that the three-putt is a killer. The three-putt is what every golfer, regardless of level, wants to avoid. If you’re making a lot of three putts, then it doesn’t take much working out to conclude that you won’t be making a good score, though if you can keep the three-putts down to the bare minimum, or better yet avoid them altogether, you’ll always have a chance of scoring well.

Remember to lag

If you find yourself on the green faced with a relatively tricky long putt, the best advice is to aim for the lag. For those who don’t know, a lag putt is where you aim to get close to the hole, so as to leave yourself with a simple enough second putt, which gives you the best chance of avoiding the dreaded three-putt.

If you adopt an approach where you’re really aggressive with all of your long putts, unless you’re an outstanding player, then you’re likely to misjudge a few and leave yourself in the position of having a really difficult second putt to hit. If you do this several times per round, chances are, you’ll leave the course having three-putted multiple times, so focus on lag putting more often than not.

The numbers

Now, what is a good number of putts for 18 holes? Well, in general anywhere between 30 and 36 putts per round is considered reasonable for the average golfer. After all, if you’re hitting 36 putts, that’s an average of two putts on every green, which isn’t too bad. That said, it really does depend on your level. Below is a table showing a good number of average putts per round depending on your level.

I personally want to keep my number of putts below 33 and I'm happy, but if I manage to keep them below 30 per round it's a really great result.

Number of putts per 18 holes also depends on the GIR

If you hit many GIR (greens in regulation) and you putt for birdie, it's normal that you have more putts, because you're not alway close to the hole. The number of putts per 18 holes should drop if you don't hit so many greens but you have a good short game.

Good chipping will get you close to the hole and consequently shorter putts for up and down. 

My personal lowest number of putts per 18 holes is 25 from a few years ago. I hit 12 greens, one-putted 4 of them, two-putted 8 of them and on other 5 holes I made up and down. At the 18th hole I chipped in for a par 😊😊

Conclusion

As you can see from the table above the average putts per round can differ by much with different handicap. Sometimes putting doesn't feel like an important thing to practice, but it takes one third of your shots or even more, so don't skip putting practice. You can even practice it at home! It. can improve your score by even 3 or more shots!