Golf is a numbers game. To excel, it requires both art and science. The art can be there from birth and might even be developed some over the years. But the science is there for everyone to use to their advantage. This is one of the reasons that I’m a serious stats guy. I’ve been a little overwhelmed with the journey that I’ve just embarked on, so I’ve been a little lax in keeping my own stats, but I promise you, that will change as I get settled in.

When you do your practice sessions, what do you work on? Your stats tell you what to do, don’t they? Right?

In my opinion, and this isn’t groundbreaking theory here, one of the biggest issues in people’s practice time is that they don’t practice the areas that need the most work. Psychologically, people like to do what they’re best at. If you know someone who might have a relatively high handicap but hits his driver well, go to the range with him. I bet he hits a lot of drivers. Meanwhile he three-putts 12 times per round. Duh!

Keeping accurate statistics is the best way to help us target our practice time. Remember when I talked about perception versus reality? Well the same problem arises when we try to honestly evaluate our own progress in between rounds. Sometimes we don’t realize how bad (or good) our performance is in a certain area, and sometimes our egos won’t let us face the issue(s).

Whatever the cause, keeping good stats will help us to figure out what we really should be spending our time working on. Sure, conventional wisdom tells us that the most time should be spent on short game/putting and to an extent, that’s true. However, if every time you stand on a tee you run the risk of spraying the ball out of bounds or in the water, don’t be afraid to pay some mind to that part of your game.

My recommendations are as follows: first, figure out what stats you want to keep. At a minimum, I suggest keeping track of fairways and greens hit, sand saves, up and downs from around the green, total putts, and penalty strokes. After that, you might want to keep track of driving distance, putt distance, total eagles/birdies/pars/bogeys, and anything else that tickles your fancy.

Second, you need to figure out how to keep track of these things during a round. The easiest way I’ve found is just to develop a meaningful shorthand notation and use the extra space on the scorecard for each hole (grab an extra card for yourself if you have four players’ scores to record). After the round, it helps to find a way to keep all these stats compiled and have something do all the computations for you. There are many websites that will do this for free. Right now, I’m trying a custom Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that was developed by someone and is available for a free 30-day trial on the web. It’s eventual price is $19. If it turns out that I like it, I’ll tell you about it later.

Finally, you need to make sense of what the numbers are telling you. That’s the difficult part because it’s hard to know how many fairways or greens we should be hitting. This is something you can team up with your pro to figure out. He/she will be able to see where you need the most improvement. But improvement is the real key. Once you have a baseline for comparison, then just look for improvement in the things you work on. Then try to target the things that aren’t improving.

Also, don’t be afraid to have a peek at the stats from the various professional tours, especially if you’re a low-handicapper. Look at the various categories and see what the highest and lowest ranks are. You might find that some aspects of your game are better than you think and maybe you’re in the mix. When I was playing my best, I was taking about 1.8 putts per hole, which puts me within the top 100 on the PGA Tour. Of course, the tour pros play on greens that are the hardness and speed of glass, but hey, we’re doing the best we can in the situations we’re presented with.

Join me on my magnificent stat-keeping adventure. Stats are your friend. Compile them, analyze them, live them, love them.

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