Tyler Clark - Backswing
Keeping Track of Your Stats
By
May 7, 2008 - 12:40:42 PM

Spring has finally arrived, and somewhere between the raindrops, most of you may have had a chance to play a little golf.  Hopefully, some of you have even played well.   For those of you who want to see your scores come down, the best way to do this is to listen to your game.  I know that this sounds a little strange, but what I am talking about is tracking your round.
 
Keep the stats of your game as you play.  The main stats to keep are: fairways hit as a percentage; greens hit in regulation as a percentage; putts per green in regulation; total putts; up and downs as a percentage; and sand saves.   For those of you who don’t know what these terms mean, bear with me.  A fairway hit only counts on the first shot off the tee box.  A green hit in regulation is having your ball on the green in two strokes less than par.  Up and down means that when you don’t hit the green in regulation, you still make par.  For a round number, you can plan on 36 putts per round at the most since you would like to at least two putt every green, and a sand save is getting up and down from a greenside bunker.

Now that you know what to keep track of, take the average of these after a few rounds and you will see what areas of your game are hurting your scores the most.  Here is the catch: now you have to practice these areas of your game, whether it is your driver, bunkers, putting, short game, or iron play.  My guess is that you haven’t been practicing it as much as you should because it isn’t that much fun to frustrate yourself by doing something you aren’t that good at.  This is where the mental discipline comes in.  

Practice, practice, practice.  Did I mention that you have to practice if you want to get better?  Tracking your round can tell you what to practice: now it’s up to you to do it.   Tiger has said that he evaluates every round of golf he plays and learns something from every one.  If he can, I bet we can also.  

Try to learn what you can from yourself.  If you can improve your own game, then maybe you can start to realize that golf is really about what you can do and not anyone else.  All you have to do is pay attention.  

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