For this edition of Inside the Numbers we've ranked the 5 hardest around-the-green spots at Augusta National using data from the 2021 Masters. Each green surround is divided into 4 quadrants (long-right, short-right, long-left, short-left), and the 4 pin positions from 2021 are used. We’ve grouped shots together based on pin position, around-the-green quadrant, and lie (e.g. fairway, bunker). We estimate a shot’s difficulty using strokes-gained relative to the PGA Tour baseline (i.e. how close to the pin the shot was hit compared to what we would expect at a typical PGA Tour course). To account for sample size issues — i.e. to fairly compare 20 shots with an average baseline SG of -0.3 to 10 shots with an average baseline SG of -0.5 — we use a simple empirical Bayes method. This gives us a predicted difficulty, in strokes relative to expectation, for each around-the-green “spot” at Augusta National, which we use as the basis of our rankings. For each group of shots we give some summary statistics that are mostly self-explanatory, but there is one value that isn’t: the “short-sidedness” of a shot is the distance between the fringe and the pin divided by the distance of the shot. A lower % means less green to work with. Enjoy!