Golf Statistics
A better way to track and improve your golf game
Late last year I attended the Pelz Short Game School in Palm Springs with my friend Jason. If you’re interested in learning a lot about the short game and making huge improvements over three days (and don’t mind paying for it), I’d highly recommend it! In addition to teaching technique, the course covers a lot of the statistics that caused Pelz to really focus on the short game as the most important element to scoring well. That got me thinking about the statistics I keep and whether they really help me improve me game.
The purpose of keeping statistics on your game is to help you figure out what you need to get better at to improve — and specifically to lower you score. I was keeping the same statistics as most people — fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts taken, sand saves, etc. However, my instructor pointed out that most of these were not very valuable statistics in actually understanding where your game is strong or week.
For example, percent greens in regulation — what does that statistic actually tell you? If it’s trending down — what do you need to work on? The answer is — it depends. Were you missing greens from the middle of the fairway because your irons were badly off? Or did you simply not have many reasonable shots at the green. A high number of putts taken could simply be cause by continually hitting the ball to 60’ — while a low number of putts taken could be caused by missing lots of greens and chipping it close — neither of which is about your putting!
Probably the best statistics out there for telling you where you are playing well or poorly is the “strokes gained” statistic. This is essentially tells you whether you performed better or worse than other players from similar situations. For example, if it took you 2.5 strokes on average to get the ball in the hole from 60 feet on the green — and everyone else took an average of 2.2 — then you’re losing .3 strokes on 60 foot putts. You can do the same sort of math for any sort of shot — and those numbers are as good as it gets for understanding your strengths and weaknesses — but they have two big problems.
Problems with Current Stats
First, they require you to keep a very detailed log of shots and outcomes — not realistic for most amateur golfers. Second, they require a peer group to compare against — for which you have similar statistics. That makes this a fabulous stat for PGA tour pros who have a team of analysts tracking very shot they hit — and a field of competitors every week to compare to. However, it’s not a realistic model for your average weekend amateur. So I wanted to see if I could create a model that was simple enough to be usable and yet still helpful in pointing out what was working and what wasn’t — here’s what I came up with.
Pelz breaks the game up into three different “games” — the power game, the short game, and putting. Each needs different statistics to see how they are performing. I ended up creating 2–3 stats for each game. I also wanted to keep the stats very simple to track in order to make them easy to use — if you’re anything like me anything too complicated just won’t get done. My principle was I needed to easily be able to keep them all on the bottom half of my scorecard when I was paying. Here are my stats:
Power Game
The power game is probably the most similar to the traditional statistics you measure. To measure accuracy off the tee — we measure the percentage of time we hit a tee shot and give ourselves a reasonable shot at the green. This is a bit more subjective — but I think it’s better than counting shots in the first cuts as “missed fairways”. For approach shots, we calculate the percentage or reasonable attempts that are successful.
This second statistic can get a bit interesting. For one — you may not have any result at all for a hole where you miss the fairway badly — or for a Par 5 your go for in 2. No success and no failure — just nothing. Secondly, you can define “success” and “reasonable” variably depending on your level. You may choose not to include shots with more than a 4 iron because it’s not realistic for you to reach the green. You may define “success” variably based on the club (eg hitting anywhere on the green with a 4 iron is success, but on the green outside of 20 feet is not).
My rules for “success” are on the green with a long iron (4–6), 30 feet away with a mid (7–8) and within 20 feet for a wedge (I carry 4). I don’t include attempts with hybrids or woods. It’s not critical that your success criteria are the same — but you should figure out how you want to define them before you start each round. And as you get better — you may want to update them to help you set new standards for yourself!
Short Game
My short game stats veer even a little farther away from the standards. Here, I break the game down into pitches, chips, and sand shots and calculate the “success percentage” of each type shot. Success is generally defined as getting inside of 5 feet for chips and 10 feet for pitches and sand shots. Once we’ve gotten inside those distances, we’ve given ourselves a reasonable chance at up-and-down.
Putting
Putting is where things get more interesting. Most players only look at number of putts, or number of putts on greens in regulation. However, that doesn’t tell you enough about how well you’re putting. Pelz breaks putting down into lag putts (generally 15 feet plus) and makable putts (generally 3–15 feet). Putts inside of 3 feet should be make almost all of the time. I keep track of the percentage of successful putts for each type. For lag putts, success is defined as being inside of 3 feet. For makable putts its defined as being inside of 3 feet — and getting to the hole (short doesn’t count). The theory here is that for makable putts you can’t afford to leave it short, but lag putts you just want to get close.
Tracking
This leaves us with 7 statistics to keep: all success percentages for: tee shots, approach shots, chips, putts, sand shots, lag putts, and makable putts. This feels like a reasonable number — and it’s something we can count on a round-by-round level and not at the individual hole level. And, since each statistic is a success percentage we can easily look and see what kind of shots we are executing consistently and which we are not — great info that can help you decide where to focus your practice time.
During a round I use the bottom of the scorecard to track these stats. I dedicate one line each to (1) tee shots (2) approach shots (3) short game (4) putts. On the tee and approach lines I put a check or an X for success or failure and leave it blank if there was no reasonable attempt made. For the short game, I will enter a “P”, “C” or “S” for the type of shot along with a check or an X based the results (hopefully we don’t need more than one!) Finally, on the putting line I enter a “L” or an “M” for the type of shot along with a check or an X (sometimes with an LX, we need a second entry for an M).
At the end of each round, I add up the totals and add them to this spreadsheet to track my stats. It’s very helpful to see how I’m performing and trending in each area of my game. In particular, it lets me know where I should be spending my practice time if I really want to improve my game — and my scores! I’d love feedback on these stats (I’m still working on them) and the tracking mechanism — I’m always looking for new and better ways to improve my game!
