The most insane Masters scorecards from the past 25 years

I pulled in every Masters scorecard from 2001 to 2025 to see what kind of wild stuff I could find in the data. For those keeping track at home, after filtering out incomplete data that's:

• 540 players
• 6,968 rounds (so close...)
• 125,125 holes

Throughout this article, if I say that something is the best or worst "in history", I'm referring only to this dataset from 2001 onwards.

To start, I wanted to take a look at the longest streaks (both good and bad) of consecutive under or over par holes. No real surprise that Tiger has the longest streak of consecutive under-par holes with seven birdies in a row on Saturday in 2005 en route to his victory.

I also wanted to check if this was the best seven-hole streak in the data, in case someone threw in an eagle. Nobody else made it to -7 but a whole group of guys have stretches of -6. A bunch of names and Masters winners you'd expect like Phil, Hideki, Spieth. But one caught my eye here: Bo Van Pelt. He went -6 starting on #12 with two eagles, including an ace on 16.

Somehow the only video of the hole-in-one I can find is the grainiest thing I have ever seen that is obviously just some guy filming his TV. I'll have more to say about Bo in one of our upcoming articles but this guy was a menace at Augusta.

Just to double check, I did confirm that Bo is tied for the six-hole stretch lead, along with some other guys including Luke Donald who also had a couple eagles on 13 and 15. Potentially more impressive because he went on this tear after a double on 10.

Next, I decided to look at every possible stretch of holes to see what the best score was for every given combination. Because I decided to be annoying about the definitions, I limited stretches to between two and 17 holes. One hole isn't a stretch, 18 holes is a round. 17 holes probably isn't a stretch either but I didn't know where else to draw the line if not 17. Nobody has ever touched the -10 mark

To try to feel better about my own game, I pulled the opposite – the worst stretches of holes since 2001. I had to take some liberties with the following table because massive blow up holes influence the results significantly (e.g. Billy Casper made a 14 on a single hole, so he technically has the worst 2,3, and 4 hole streaks). I only allowed a player's round to be considered the worst once in this table. That allows us to see more terrible rounds.

My favorite of these is Sergio who made a 13 on the 15th hole and followed it up with a birdie. Technically the "worse" streak would have been 13-14-15 at +9 but 14-15-16 at +8 is still the worst and is significantly funnier because it means the worse 3-hole stretch includes a birdie. Vintage Sergio.

The longest streak of over-par holes belongs to Gary Player who made nine in a row in 2005 but also followed it with a birdie on 12, one of the more difficult holes on the course!

The Masters Michael Scott Snip-Snap-Snip-Snap Reverse Vasectomy Award goes to Lee Westwood during his 2007 Saturday round. Look at this masterpiece. My logic didn't include pars but if it did, he would have had 12 consecutive holes of "direction changes".

In another instance of Snip-Snappery, Brian Harman shot a 34-47 in 2024 which was the biggest swings between sides in this dataset.

Bubba Watson carded the most shapes in a row on his scorecard during his 2013 Friday round. He was playing LOOSE in 2013 in between his wins in 2012 and 2014.

Anthony Kim recorded more birdies than anyone in 2009 with 11. Unfortunately, he also made a double and two bogeys, or he would have had the single-round Masters record.

I almost didn't check this one because I thought for sure nobody would have more than two eagles in a round. But I was wrong! Dustin Johnson made THREE eagles in 2015!

Frequent readers of Garbage Time Sports know that I love a clean sheet. And by golly, we've got a beautiful clean sheet on one of the most beautiful courses in the world. I'm printing this out, framing it, and putting it on my wall. Only one of these since 2001.

That's all for my favorite scorecards in this dataset! Let me know if there's a good one I missed. The next parts of our series will be about individual holes at Augusta, players' careers at the Masters, and anything else fun we can think of. Here's a little teaser for some data we're pulling on career performances.

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P.S. Please look at Jason Day's planned fits for Masters week. Wish I could take credit for this joke, but a friend of mine said he's going with the Nigel Thornberry look on Wednesday.

-Mike