Dear Joan,
It's hard for me to tell much about the total number of putts per round very early on. The official PGA Tour stats go back only to 1980.
Putting performance is greatly affected throughout history by technology and agronomy. From the mid-1800s to about 1900, the gutta percha ball was used, having taken over from the featherie. The "guttie" lowered scoring in the British Open by 3 strokes: According to the Leith Society History of the Rules of Golf, "R&A records show that the average score of the Open Champion fell by 3 strokes with the introduction of the guttie balls." [
http://www.ruleshistory.com/clubs.html] The Haskell (rubber core) ball was introduced in 1898 but was not popular because it was deemed "too lively" on the greens. However, Walter Travis won the 1901 US Amateur with this ball and putted so well that everyone just forgot about any problems putting this ball. Will Grimsley, Golf - It's History, People and Events (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 15. The Leith Society comments:
"The rubber-cored, Haskell ball was introduced in 1898. Again, there were advantages in performance and durability over the guttie and this wound type ball with a rubber outer covering dominated (balata was first used in 1904). The wound rubber ball was first used in the 1902 Open by only a few players, including the eventual winner Alex Herd; in 1903 almost every player was using it. The Open Champions’ scoring average in the ten years prior to 1902 was 78.5, for the period 1902-1926 it fell to 75.1."
[
http://www.ruleshistory.com/clubs.html] The dimple, which generally adversely affects putting, was introduced in 1908 for aerodynamic purposes. Grimsley, 15. The size of balls was irregular until 1915, when 1.62 ounces and 1.62 inches in diameter became standard. Id. at 16. The US, however, in 1929-1932, opted for a larger ball, weighing "at least" 1.62 ounces and 1.68 inches in diameter. Id. (In 1929, a 1.55 ounce ball was tried but ballooned too much in flight.) Id. In 1990, the R&A finally outlawed the smaller British ball. [
http://www.ruleshistory.com/clubs.html] See also Golf Links to the Past, History of the Golf Ball [
http://www.golfspast.com/club/articles/clubs_used.htm].
Putters were wooden until green surfaces improved around the beginning of the 20th century. Bob Fergusson of Musselburgh, Scotland, first used a metal putter around then, but golfers stuck with two putters for quite a while -- wooden for rough greens and metal for smooth. Grimsley, 21. Walter Travis was the first non-Brit to win the British Amateur in 1904, and he was using the famous metal Schenectady putter. Steel-shafted clubs were authorized between 1924 and 1929. Id. at 23; Golf Links to the Past, History of Steel Shafts [
http://www.golfspast.com/club/articles/steel_shaft.htm].
The golf hole was standardized to 4.25 inches in 1891. Leith Society, Putting Green [
http://www.ruleshistory.com/green.html]. The "green" itself was simply the part of the "green" of the course around the cup, and was not really a distinct feature until after 1875, when the teeing ground became specially prepared. From 1829 to 1952, the green was defined as the area within 20 yards of the hole. In 1952, the green was defined as the area "specially prepared" for putting. Id. Many "greens" in fact were made with sand. The famous Donald Ross greens in Pinehurst were sand greens until 1936, due to the difficulty of propogating good putting turfgrass year-round in the temperate pine barrens. PuttingZone.com, Sand Greens [
http://puttingzone.com/sandgreens.html]. The greens of Augusta National, built in 1934, were Bermuda until 1981, when they were switched to bent grass. The development of the USGA perched water table design for greens and the advent of the triplex mower in the 1970s greatly improved putting surfaces. In the 1990s, many course started moving towards fine bentgrasses like Penncross, especially the A- and G-2 bentgrasses. Pinehurst converts No. 7 to G-2, Golfweek, Jan. 11, 2002 [
http://www.golfweek.com/articles/2002_/superintendent/31154.asp]. It has been estimated that the putting stroke average of the pros between 1986 and 2000 improved a mere 0.5 putts per round, and most of this improvement reflected advances in agronomy, design and construction, and maintenance of greens. Golfweek, June 20, 1998.
Scoring at the pro level has been somewhat uneven during the 20th century. Bobby Jones in 1927 was the first player in British Open history to better par for all four rounds. Bobby Locke set the widest margin of victory at 16 strokes over the second place finisher in 1947, a record that stood until just recently. Ernie Els this year set the lowest score for four rounds at 31 under. The PGA Tour record for fewest putts was set at 93 in 1989 by Kenny Knox at Harbour Town Links. A half-dozen have used 95 putts. Chris Riley completed this week's event with only 95 putts. Bobby Locke in the 1940s and Arnold Palmer in the 1960s considered 25 putts per round as their goal, and also considered 30-31 putts as a poor round. In 1945 when Byron Nelson won 19 events, with 11 in a row, his stroke average for the year was an astonishing 68.33. Rounds between 62 and 67 were fairly common for Hogan and Nelson in the late 1940s. Hogan won the 1948 US Open with an "average" score of 68 for four rounds. Billy Casper won the US Open with 114 total putts, an average of 28.25 putts per round.
My studies of PGA Tour events have indicated a steady range of about 20 putts from top to bottom for the field of event finishers. This range fluctuates depending upon course and weather conditions, but seldom dips below 105 putts for the minimum. The field generally stays in the 105 to 125 putts range, or 26.5 to 31.25 putts per round.
You mention Bob Heintz's 2002 putts per GIR stat of 1.682. I would caution you that this is a remarkable stat, far outside the norm. Before 2002, the Tour players have consistently stayed within the range of 1.7 to 1.9, with an average near 1.8. The range from 125th to 1st in putting stats is usually 1.8 to 1.7. If this range is considered a baseline choo-choo of 100 cars, Bob Heintz was about 15 to 20 car lengths in front of the best-ever on Tour.
A study I did of putting improvement from 2001 to 2002 showed merely one-third of the players getting much better, while two-thirds stagnated or fell back. This leads me to believe that the field as a whole is not moving up much, if at all. Anyone browsing the hundreds of putting news stories collected on my website would see that while putting rounds of 22-25 putts per rounds occur perhaps once in a round of 150 golfers, and golfers make it through four rounds with averages of 26-27 putts with about the same infrequency, the standard Tour player performance is pretty much stuck at 29 putts per round or 116 putts for a 4-round event. In 1980, this figure was about 30 putts per round, which is consistent with the Golfweek June 1998 story. You can chart the PGA Tour total putts since 1980 and putts per GIR since 1986 from this page:
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/1980/r_119.html.
You should note that the 2003 stats are not yet "ripe," and won't be until about June, since some one-day-wonders set unrealistic performance standards early on that don't hold up as the year progresses.
Golfonline.com in Hole 6 has many historical performance statistics, but the stats for putting do not go back very far.
The USGA in its Golf Journal for November 1964, November 1965, and November 1966 studied putting in US Open Championships for four years, 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1966. Cochran and Stobbs, The Search for the Perfect Swing (1968), report and compare this data with comparable data for the British Open. This data is in the form of percentage of putts holed for given distances. Dave Pelz says he studied PGA Tour putting in this same sense for 1977 to 1992, and gives a chart of results in The Putting Bible (2000), p. 7. I believe the PGA has a similar study. I've collated all these figures and it is fairly obvious to me that the "make" percentages from the 1960s are about the same as those in the 1977-1992 era, in the US and the UK.
Dr. Clyne Solely, in How Well Should You Putt (1977), studied pro and amateur putting and correlated total putts with handicap skill level. His data for amateur men came from 972 rounds played in the California area between 1970 and 1975; His amateur men data also included another 1,950 miscellaneous rounds played between 1955 and 1975, for a total of 2,822 rounds. His pro men's data came from 186 rounds of televised All-Star Golf in the early 1960s. The women's amateur data included 1,714 rounds between 1955 and 1975, and the women's pro data was 117 LPGA rounds in 1970 and 1971. For men with handicaps +3, Soley found an average score of 69.6 and a total average of putts of 30.6. For +2: 70.8 and 30.7; for +1: 72.0 and 30.7; for scratch: 73.2 and 30.8. At +3, putting was 44% of the total score; at 0, it was 41.6%. Soley also analyzed data from the 1972 US Open at Pebble Beach.
I don't know whether the USGA or the PGA has better or more detailed and extensive data. Since last year, the PGA Tour has been keeping Shotlink data about every putt's length, but according to my friend and Golf.com statistician Pat Larkey, this data is not in an easily usable format.
Let me know if I can do more. I'd like to see what else you can find out, too, if you don't mind.
Always willing to help!
--
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone.com
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