
We’ll explain this in more detail later but the long game is more important than the short game when it comes to scoring. Penalty strokes are round-killers.- Lou Stagner (Golf Stat Pro) JPar-3 Greens in Regulation (GIR) % ▶️how many tee shots left me a *reasonable* opportunity to get on in regulation Whatever the results this stat will give you a clear indication whether your driving off the tee is improving or getting worse. If that’s the case it may be time to start experimenting with a different strategy off the tee either by picking a different target line or choosing a different club. The aim is, of course, is to start cutting out these ‘scorecard wreckers’ from your card.Īnd once you’ve tracked this stat for a few weeks at your home course you may find some trends emerging such as particular holes where you are always making major driving mistakes. Therefore from now on simply mark the holes where you make one of these 3 mistakes off the tee with any club – ‘out of bounds’, ‘into a hazard’ or ‘into major trouble’. They are the ones that go ‘out of bounds’, or into a hazard, or into major trouble giving you no chance of hitting the green in regulation and most likely requiring you to simply hit a shot to get the ball back in play.
#Beginner handicap golf tv
“Keeping track of how many fairways you hit, how many up and downs you got, and how many greens in regulation you are hitting – they’re not telling anything worth of value that’s going to help you play better golf.” Todd Kolb (PGA Teaching Professional), Director of Instruction US Golf TV

The drives that destroy a scorecard the most are not the ones that end up in the rough.

The value to the average golfer of using this statistic to help highlight how good or bad their driving is therefore clearly flawed.Ī much better driving measurement for the average player to keep track of is the number of ‘major driving mistakes’ they make. The problem with it is that it doesn’t tell a very detailed story about the quality of the drives that you play.įor example a topped tee shot that went 50 yards but ended in the fairway on a 420-yard par 4 would count better for this stat than a 300-yard drive which is in the perfect position to come into the flag but only a couple of yards off the fairway in light rough. This stat measures the percentage of time a tee shot on a par 4 or par 5 comes to rest in the fairway regardless of the club used. The traditional measurement of driving performance in golf has been ‘fairways hit’. The second 5 will help you go a bit deeper into analysing your game as you get better and want to really start honing in on those areas of your golf game that are stopping you scoring better. The first 5 stats are focused on highlighting ‘major mistakes’ and are the essential ones for all players, particularly beginners and high handicappers. So to help we’ve put together the following list of the 10 best stats to keep track of to enable you to improve your golf game across the 4 main disciplines – driving, approach shots, short game and putting. Unfortunately though the traditional stats that amateurs have collected over the years – % of fairways hit, up and down % and the number of putts per round – are binary yes/no answers to describe a very complex, multi-dimensional game and as a result can misleading. Stats have a way of cutting the emotion out of the analysis of your game and help you focus on real problems rather than the ones you think are to blame.Īfter all you wouldn’t let your doctor treat you without doing some tests first to highlight what the problem actually is. For example counting the tee shots that go out of bounds or into trouble is better than tracking fairways hit and counting your number of 3-putts helps more than counting total putts per round. However because the average golfer does not have 8-hour practice sessions 4-times a week to let them identify key areas of their game that they need to improve actually serves to illustrate how stats are really even more important to them.īut there are literally hundreds of stats that can be tracked so it is frequently difficult for regular players who want to improve to know what are the good golf stats they should be keeping a track of.Īs a whole amateurs should keep track of their ‘major mistakes’ stats instead of traditional golf stats which can be misleading. While the PGA Tour pros have armies of people and mountains of technology available to gather and analyse their stats the average amateur barely has enough time on occasion to make it to the first tee on time never mind think about what are the best golf stats for them to be tracking. It’s important to track wayward drives that give you no chance of hitting the green
