Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through how I figured out the number of pars in the 2024 Masters. It was kinda a random thing, but hey, that’s how side projects start, right?
First off, I remembered seeing something about course conditions affecting scores, especially at Augusta. Figured the number of pars relative to the field was a good starting point. So, I started digging around on the official Masters website. Man, navigating that thing can be a pain sometimes!
Couldn’t find a straight answer right away. They’re more about highlighting the big names and fancy shots than just spitting out raw stats. So, next stop: the PGA Tour’s website. They usually have more detailed data. Still, nothing super clear on total pars made.
That’s when I was like, “Alright, gotta do this the hard way.” I pulled up the leaderboard for each round – you know, Round 1, Round 2, etc. – and started manually counting. For each player, I noted whether they were even par (meaning they shot the course’s par of 72). Then I tallied up how many players shot par or better in each round. This gave me a rough idea of how many pars were being made overall.
This was where it got a little tedious. I went through each round, one player at a time. I had a simple notepad where I was keeping track of the numbers. It was a bit of a grind, especially after the second round. I almost gave up, haha!
After finishing all four rounds, I added up the total number of times someone shot par. Then, I looked at the number of rounds played in total. I noticed some players missed the cut after round 2 so their number of rounds were not the same as those players who made the cut. I had to factor that in.
Ultimately, I figured that based on the average number of players shooting par each round, and multiplying that by the total number of rounds played across the whole tournament, I had an estimate of how many total pars were made at the 2024 Masters.
Lessons learned? Sometimes the easiest data is the hardest to find. And manual data entry? Still a thing! But hey, I got my answer, and hopefully, this little walkthrough shows you how I went about getting it.
- Started with the official Masters website
- Moved to the PGA Tour’s website
- Manually collected the data from the leaderboards
- Calculated the estimated number of pars
It was a fun little dive, even if it was a bit more hands-on than I initially expected.
