It's a key stat in success at The Masters, but for golf fans it also could be key to glory as the amount of putts taken at Augusta National this year could result in a big windfall.
As the question of how many putts will be taken at the 2026 Masters is the tiebreaker question for the Masters fantasy game this year.
Putting is a crucial component of being successul in the race for the Green Jacket, with Augusta National's greens famously difficuly to navigate.
Accessed via the offical website, the 2026 Fantasy Masters game again requires fans to pick five golfers from five different categories to form a roster for the tournament at Augusta.
Players then win and lose points depending on performance with daily prizes and overall prizes - but if teams are level come Sunday then a crucial tiebreaker will be the decider.
So having a rough idea of just how many putts will be taken during the tournament is crucial - and we can get a steer from last year's Masters.
The average number of putts for a Masters champion is around 114.
Canadian Mike Weir holds the record for the fewest total putts by a Masters winner with 104 in 2003 while Vijay Singh took the most putts to win The Masters with 124 during his 2000 success.
There's the field size to take into account, with 91 players teeing it up in the 2026 Masters, and then the cut mark with the top 50 making the weekend at Augusta National.
How many putts were there at the 2025 Masters?
Rory McIlroy took 111 putts to win The Masters last year, with Bryson DeChambeau and Tom Hoge taking the fewest strokes with their flat sticks with just 108 each.
For the 53 players who made the cut, there were a total of 6,176 putts recorded, coming in at an average of 116.52 per player.
That's an improvement on the 2024 numbers which saw 60 players make the cut and take 7,053 putts at an average of 117.55 putts for the Masters tournament.
The 29 players who missed the cut in 2024 took a further 1,745 putts at an average of around 60 putts per player for the first two rounds, taking the total putts at the 2024 Masters to 8,798.
Applying that to 2025 we had 42 players miss the cut at Augusta National and with around the same average that'd add a further 2,520 to the tally.
So that would give us a total number of putts at the 2025 Masters to around 8,696 - or thereabouts - as data on this isn't provided by Augusta National.
How many putts will there be at the 2026 Masters?
As it's not an exact science this by a long way, but what we do have is some steady averages to put into play for those that make the cut and those that don't.
We have 91 in the field for the 2026 Masters and the big variance comes with how many players make the cut, with a 53-42 split in 2025 and a 60-29 split in 2024, with seven more players making the weekend but a smaller total field.
So each extra player making the cut adds around another 57-60 putts or so for the extra two rounds, but we lose around the same for every player not in the field. Complicated isn't it?
Conditions also play a part with dry and fast greens making putting far tougher on these Augusta National putting surfaces so it's an almost impossible task to hit the nail on the head exactly.
But that doesn't stop us having a go!
The average number of players to make the cut over the last 10 years is 56 but in four of the last five years it's been 54 and under so let's take 54 as our guide and apply an average of 117 putts per tournament for them - splitting the difference of the last two years.
That gives us 6,318, to which we add the 41 players missing the cut taking our average of 60 putts for 36 holes to give us a further 2,460.
So our grand total for the number of putts there'll be at the 2026 Masters comes out at 8,778, which fits right in the wheelhouse for the last two tournaments.
Good luck to those taking part!
