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The hardest part for the machine would be the intricacies of the game. How does it calculate for a spike mark in the line of the putt? How does it account for a mudball in the middle of the fairway? How can it judge what lie will produce a flyer and which one won't?
For example, if you took a hole like 18 at Hoylake yesterday, there isn't a way to stop the ball within 10 feet of the hole without a tremendous amount of luck because you are hitting into a pin tucked behind a front bunker with a hard landing area. A slight variation in the hook spin necessary to get the ball close could just as easily cause it to dive in the front bunker.
12 at Augusta is completely random. The wind patterns are, literally, chaotic. You have to pick a club and hope.
If the machine doesn't hole out with an approach shot (randomness) and plays no driveable par 4's, then the lowest it could score on a Par 72 course even if it one-putted every green would be 50. Assuming it drives half the par fours on the course, then the best it could score with all one-putts would be a 45. Bring in further randomness of putting and green conditions into the fray and that number creeps up by another handful of shots.
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"When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”--Abraham Lincoln
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