Higher Scoring

I mentioned in my Smatterchew post that scores this year have been a bit higher than in 2006. Since I didn’t want to spend several days punching numbers into a calculator, I thought this could be shown with a chart comparing the scoring averages from position #1 on down through the rankings. For example - Ochoa won the Vare Trophy in ’06 with an average of 69.24 and this year the leader in scoring average (who just happens to be Lorena again) is at 70.09, a difference of +0.85 strokes.

Pos 2007 2006 Diff
1 70.09 69.24 +0.85
5 71.00 70.48 +0.52
10 71.39 71.02 +0.37
15 71.76 71.33 +0.43
20 71.89 71.51 +0.38
30 72.31 71.80 +0.51
40 72.64 72.08 +0.56
50 72.95 72.22 +0.73
60 73.08 72.44 +0.64
70 73.21 72.65 +0.56
80 73.46 72.85 +0.61
90 73.62 72.99 +0.63
100 73.78 73.16 +0.62
125 74.63 73.74 +0.89

From this chart, it would be safe to say that scoring is up about 0.60 strokes per round. We’ve had some windy conditions and a few rain delays in several events. With hotter weather to come, that might help the averages come down. I’ll revisit this topic after a few more tournaments.