Statistics & truth.

There is so much nonsense attached to ‘golf statistics’ that the mere mortal golfer becomes obsessed with this television/commentator crap. It eats away at their confidence because they have failed to hit fairways & greens in regulation & then x2 putt for par.

We have to simplify the stats for us everyday golfers to show where we may go, historically, wrong by marking down the amount of putts taken on each green. It may take us 2/3/4 (or 5) shots to get onto the putting surface & once there how many more shots until we are below ground ……

Truly the best advice ever given to the amateur golfer – by all professionals – is to concentrate on pitching & more importantly putting.

Every round I play I mark down my score, naturally, but I also record how many putts taken. This is THE statistic that we mortal golfers should be concentrating on.

Discuss, cheers for now, John.

Amen. Chart your 2-putts v. Bogies and your 3-puts v. doubles. Coincidence?? I think not.

You can also substitute 2-chips & 3-chips and get the same correlation. Heaven help you if you get a 2/3-chip & a 2/3-putt of the same hole. Statistics can only show so much.

This assumes you’re using the right tee box and hitting fairways. If you’re not, carry a second score card and pretend you’re in the short stuff.

Get a piece of graph paper and have fun,

Larry

I believe that it’s up to the individual golfer to decide whether stats really are important or not. They have always been there but it wasn’t until recently that more and more weight has been attached to them.

Personally I kept track of all my stats last year, which helped me realize where I could make room for improvement. Sometimes I ‘thought’ or ‘felt’ that my chipping was poor when in reality it was my ‘putting’ or some other stat that was hindering my improvement.

By doing this I improved from a 19 handicap at the beginning of 2006 down to an 11. All while practicing less! I’ve always believed that “Perfect Practice makes Perfect” so just practicing smart and using my stats helped validate that for me.

The only thing I keep track of other than my score (obviously) is how many shots I take <100 yards>

It really gave me a good indication that the short game is where I need to spend my time practicing, not on the range with my driver.

I only really started figuring out my game when I started tracking my stats. I discovered that my driving wasn’t that bad, and that I could quickly save some shots through putting. Then came the work on chipping, and as that got better, the putting improved as well.

First putt distance, and putts vs. score really showed where to make the fastest improvement, and I now 3-putt only once in a blue moon.

So… I ended up working from both ends, getting my putting in shape along with my driving, so that I could hit shorter irons to try to get that first putt distance down. Now my focus is really on the short irons and wedges…