How Many Birdies Do Golfers Make Per Round?

Every golfer has the ability to make a birdie, whether that be from a stunning iron shot, a holed chip or a long putt.

For most of us, though, they don’t come along too often.

Unlike the tour pros, who will often make half a dozen or so each round, most club golfers can go several rounds without making a single one.

Actually, that’s not strictly true, because it depends on how you define ‘club golfer’ and what level that player is.

To get a better idea of how birdies golfers make per round of golf, we asked our official data partner, Shot Scope, to run some numbers.

In the table below, we’ve also included the data for bogeys and double bogeys or worse.

So, how do you compare?

It’s not just the average birdie number (2.34) for the scratch player that stands out, but the average number of doubles or worse for each level of golfer.

As you would expect, as the handicap level goes up, so does the average number of bogeys and double bogeys.

What this clearly shows is that high handicap players make a lot of big numbers (card wreckers)!

The reason for this obviously comes down to technique and skill level in every aspect of the game.

Something that is harder to measure, and will be playing a part in these numbers, is course management.

In other words, one of the reasons why a 25-handicap player shoots high numbers will be because they lose more balls.

We know this because we’ve already looked at the data – and this player loses an average of 5.6 balls per round.

This might be because they decide to take on risky shots, or they simply don’t have a good enough idea of how far they hit each club.

Back to the birdies, and it’s worth us sharing a couple more numbers which highlight some of the reasons why better players make more of these.

The bottom line is, if you hit more greens in regulation and knock the ball closer to the hole, you give yourself more looks at birdies – you just have to roll them in.

Now, we mentioned above that it’s the norm for tour professionals to make six birdies a round.

Although we often see the best players in the world make a bunch or birdies, the leader on the PGA Tour in 2024 only averaged a paltry 4.88 birdies.

That was a certain Scottie Scheffler, and the PGA Tour average was actually 3.83 – which you have to say is still pretty handy, especially given the length and difficulty of the golf courses they play every week.