The article below was written by Matt Chivers of National Club Golfer.
Andy Murray has holed the final putt on the 18th green of his illustrious tennis career. Rest and reflection in the clubhouse await.
The three-time grand slam-winning Scot bowed out of the professional tennis game at the 2024 Olympics in an emotional fashion after being beaten in the men’s doubles, but he openly pondered an interesting prospective new chapter when speaking afterwards.
“I’ll play a lot of golf,” he said. “I want to become a scratch golfer. I’ve always loved playing golf, but because of the issues with my back, I haven’t played for five or six years.
“I don’t know exactly what the rest of my life will look like, but I will still stay in touch with the sport. Initially, I want to be at home with my family. I want to spend a lot of time with my kids and my wife, so I won’t be on the road much, I know that.”
Reporting the handicaps of athletes from other sports and celebrities can be a murky game, especially when they admit to not playing for five or six years. Murray is said to play off 7, a handy mark indeed.
In 2019, his mother Judy shared a clip of her double Olympic gold medal-winning son hitting a driver and showing quite a tidy swing. Perhaps he and his contemporary Rafael Nadal could soon share the fairways.
Nadal reportedly plays off scratch, the mark Murray aims to reach. Despite his unorthodox swing which has been frequently shared online in previous years, the legendary Spaniard has no issue getting his ball around the course as well as the court.
Could the Andy Murray golf handicap sail down?
Shot Scope data tells us that scratch golfers hit 62% of greens in regulation during a round and from 50 – 70 yards, scratch golfers miss the green four times.
From 150 yards, Shot Scope tells us that a scratch golfer’s average proximity is 41.58 feet and from six to 12 feet, scratch golfers miss more putts than they hole. Surprised? Despite such a great standard, statistics suggest scratch is not as unattainable as you might think when crunching the numbers.
So how difficult is it? Could Murray, assuming he plays at a decent level already, reach a scratch handicap? PGA professional and National Club Golfer’s in-house teaching guru Jack Backhouse had this to say on whether Murray could realistically reach such a low handicap:
“Scratch golf is the pinnacle of amateur golf – everyone knows what this is and what it means; you’re an expert player.
“Unfortunately, a scratch golfer needs to have a scoring average of 74 and below which is extremely difficult across a whole season.
“A scratch golfer needs to have a pretty much complete game and can’t have any gaping holes in their shot arsenal – there are plenty of 5 handicappers who struggle with one area of the game that could be scratch if they sorted it.
“Getting to scratch takes a considerable amount of time and effort, something Andy Murray now has in abundance and he certainly has the work ethic. I think getting from 7 to scratch is as big a jump as 28 to 10.”
