A friend of mine posted a link on twitter today to the hole by hole scoring averages for the Am at Merion in 2005. A few things that I found interesting:
1) As I would expect, 5 and 18 were among the hardest holes while 10 and 13 were the easiest.
2) The back nine played +4.28 while the front nine played +3.87. Accordingly, 17 and 18 made for an extremely difficult finish, representing the #1 and 3 toughest holes.
3) The par 3s, with exception of 14, are going to be an incredible challenge. 3, 9, and 17 were all in the top 5 most difficult holes.
4) Overall the scoring average was 78.16. Adjusting for caliber of field, modern advances in technology, and changes to the course, my guess is we'll have a scoring average of about 73.
5) Low at Merion was 69, shot a handful of times.
Anyway, here's the link for the stats:
http://www.usamateur.org/2005/scoring/csuma.htmHere's the actual leaderboard (a pretty interesting read, some cool names on there)
http://www.usamateur.org/2005/scoring/alllb.htm Note that in the US Amateur, only half the field plays the course each day and half the field plays another course. The pins are moved in between rounds but only about 3-4 yards. Therefore, if you scroll to the middle and look at the combined average for the two rounds, those will be your field averages.