The Stat Thread

[Gerald]

What's weird is that I have a great iron swing, but I was never a good GIR golfer for some reason. Probably lack of confidence.

You should really work on getting your drives in the fairway, if your iron swing is great ...... you'll improve such a lot !!!!

[NCSU_MSE]

I started tracking my stats last year:

2009
FIR: 51%
GIR: 27%
Putts: 39.6
Avg Score: 94.5

2010
FIR: 46%
GIR: 23%
Putts: 35.8
Avg Score: 93.8



Obviously I need to keep improving my putting. That's a bit difficult right now as this scorching summer has toasted all the bentgrass greens at my home course.

[stricklerlee]

My stat for today:

Score: 42
GIR: 3/9 33%
Fairway: 5/7 71%
Putts: 16 ------- 1.77777
Scrambling: 1/5 20%
Bogey Scrambling: 5/5 100%

[Harmonious]

Through about 40 rounds this year:

Fairways: 75.6% (Good)
Greens in Reg.: 54.9% (Trying to get above 60%)
Up and Down from <40 yds: 55.7% (Pretty good)
Putts per round: 30.9 (Too high, need to get under 30)
Putts per GIR: 1.92 (Again, too high, goal is 1.8)
Avg. Score: 75.6

The good news is that each category is getting a little better every year. The bad news is that the improvements come so slowly.

[alisdair]

Those of you that use Scorecard (or track the same stats): how are your putting stats? I can't find any averages for amateurs broken down by distance. Mine are at:

0-3 feet: 94.4%
4-6 feet: 43.4%
7-10 feet: 25.0%
11-15 feet: 12.8%
16-20 feet: 3.4%
21-30 feet: 9.6%
31-50 feet: 8.0%
51+ feet: -

Seems like the right sort of curve, but I've really got to work on the 4-6 feet ones for sure.

[stricklerlee]

My stat for today at Black Position(36.4):

Score: 45
GIR: 0/9 0% ---- Wow.
Fairway: 3/8 42%
Putts: 15 ----------- 1.6666
Scrambling: 2/9 22%
Bogey Scrambling: 7/9 77%

[Kieran123]

Here are the stats for me....not including rounds from when I first started....because I didn't take it seriously. So give or take 3 or 4 rounds.

http://fairwayfiles.com/stats_home.php?uid=30904

[The Recreational Golfer]

Honestly. I don't get this stats thing, and I spent my working career as a statistician in the field of K-12 education. I just got home from playing today, and if I could have do-overs on my dumb decisions, I would have shot four strokes lower. You can keep track of the general state of fairways or greens hit, up and downs, putting, in your head. What you should write down, IMO, is mistakes you make in playing the game, when you only have one chance to make the right decision. I know skills are important and you can't play without them, but why work so hard to learn them and not pay any attention to how you're using them? End of rant.

[Harmonious]

Honestly. I don't get this stats thing, and I spent my working career as a statistician in the field of K-12 education. I just got home from playing today, and if I could have do-overs on my dumb decisions, I would have shot four strokes lower. You can keep track of the general state of fairways or greens hit, up and downs, putting, in your head. What you should write down, IMO, is mistakes you make in playing the game, when you only have one chance to make the right decision. I know skills are important and you can't play without them, but why work so hard to learn them and not pay any attention to how you're using them? End of rant.

Certainly someone with a statistical background knows that value of setting baselines in order to quantify improvement. This was the whole reasoning behind Total Quality Management which, back when America was working, was thought to be the best management theory out there.

If you don't know how you are doing, you won't know what to improve upon. For example, I compare my stats with the PGA tour stats. It becomes obvious very quickly that my GIR's and putting are far below their standards, but my fairways hit and up and down percentage is comparable. So, if I want to lower my score (that's the point, isn't it?) I should work on my iron play and my putting more than my driving and my short game. That's why I keep stats.

[The Recreational Golfer]

I'm saying that the overhead stats are only a starting point, first of all, and second of all, they don't tell the whole story and we depend on them alone at our own risk.

Statistics that tell you how many and how often don’t speak to why. In my work, the how many and how often were used to frame the problem. Not until we got to the why could we form effective policy. Not until we get to the why can we improve our golf.

The ultimate statistic in golf is score, the score you make on each hole. The overhead statistics like fairways hit, GIR, etc., don’t explain scores. They describe effects, but don't explain causes.

My point is twofold: if you’re paying attention to how you play, you know that you’re missing greens. You’d have to be pretty dense not to notice that. Even so, counting greens missed doesn’t help you solve the problem. Knowing why you're missing them does. Are you missing greens because of a rogue shot shape? Are you not picking the right club? Do you keep forgetting to take wind into account? Are you missing when the lie is not level? There are reasons why you miss greens that have to do with shot-making and some that don't. Just knowing that GIR is low won't tell you what part of your iron play to work on.

The second part of my point is that poor decision-making leads to high scores just as much as poor shot-making, but there’s no statistic for that. It gets ignored. Focusing on the overhead statistics leads us to believe that if we hit the ball better we’ll score better. And that’s true to an extent.

But as Raymond Floyd said in his book, The Elements of Scoring , "If I had the same physical skills as you, I would beat you 99 times out of 100 because I know how to play the game better than you." I won't tell you how many strokes I throw away because of bad thinking, but if I could always have a Tour caddy with me, my handicap would be half of what it is with no improvement in my physical skills.

[stricklerlee]

My stat for today:

Score: 38
GIR: 6/9 66%
Fairway: 4/7 57%
Putts: 15 ----------- 1.66666
Scrambling: 2/3 66%
Bogey Scrambling: 3/3 100%

[Harmonious]

I'm saying that the overhead stats are only a starting point, first of all, and second of all, they don't tell the whole story and we depend on them alone at our own risk.

I don't think anyone believes that keeping stats on your game will lead you lower scores. But it will tell you where you need to focus your efforts. If you are around a 10, your average score is somewhere around 85. If you wanted to start shooting under 80 consistently, do you know what part of your game (other than your mental errors) you should be concentrating on? If you hit 75% of your fairways, but only 10% greens in regulation, I'd suggest you concentrate on your approaches. If you are hitting 50% or your greens in regulation, then either you need a lot of working on the putting green or your short game sucks. How you improve in those areas is not the function of keeping statistics.

Since you're in education, here's an example: Little Johnny gets an A in all of his math classes, but D's in his English or Social Studies classes. What part of Johnny's education should he devote more time to? Same for golf.

[The Recreational Golfer]

OK, let's try this again. I agree that if you hit 75% of fairway and 10% of greens, one should concentrate on approaches. But what does 10% mean to my practice? WHY is the greens rate only 10%? Only when the reason has been discovered can "concentrating on approaches" be focused and effective.

The point of golf is not to hit fairways or to hit greens. The point is to make a good score. If I analyze my round, shot by shot, I will find out all the information I need to focus my upcoming practice. I KNOW I miss greens, but just knowing I missed 10 greens doesn't tell me anything about why I missed them, and until I know that , I can't practice the right things. On a long par four, I might not catch my driver fully and still hit it in the fairway, but be so far away that my chance of hitting the green is greatly reduced. But the solution is to concentrate on my approaches?

If I wanted to start breaking 80 consistently I know that I could do it overnight (well, as long as it took me to play four or five more rounds) by not making the mental errors that cost me those four strokes. I wouldn't have to improve my physical skills one bit. I know this because I've done the analysis. Mental errors ARE a big part of higher scores, at least my scores, and identifying them is just as important as identifying shot-making deficiencies. Yesterday I shot 85 on a difficult course and looking over the round showed me that if I had used my head better in a few places I would have had an 81.

This is the point I was making, that to look at shot-making statistics is only part of the picture. My second point is that the overhead statistics only show there is a problem. They don't indicate what to do about it, so you need to dig deeper.

As for Little Johnny, maybe he does need put in more time on English and social studies. But, since I'm in education, maybe he gets along great with his math teacher and hates his E/SS teachers and won't work for them (not realizing he's really hurting himself). Maybe he has undiagnosed vision problems and he sits in the front row of the math class but the back of the E/SS classes where he can't see the board in the front of the room clearly. Maybe he has an undiagnosed learning disability in verbal skills that he can hide in math class but not in the other two. I could go on. The D's indicate a problem, but to say that indicates the solution is "more time" could well be completely off the mark. Same for golf.

[Whiskey84]

My last 20 rounds:
6.1 handicap
82.3 scoring avg.
40.4% Fairway
1.73 Putts/hole
36.7% GIR
3.58 Score on Par 3s
4.63 Score on Par 4s
5.44 Score on Par 5s

Thoughts?

[Harmonious]

The point of golf is not to hit fairways or to hit greens. The point is to make a good score.

I guarantee if you hit more fairways and more greens, you WILL shoot lower scores.

If you choose to use stats to track your game, I think it will help your post round analysis. It won't swing the club for you, however. Sounds like your mental errors need more of your attention, anyway (four strokes per round?!).

[Stretch]

I have now managed 21 rounds since starting to play regularly again in June this year, so there are beginning to be some numbers to crunch. One conclusion that seems sort of inescapable is that I am a very, very boring golfer.

Last dozen cards: Average differential = 8.8. Birdies 4%. Pars 47%. Bogies 45%. Doubles 4%.

[ghalfaire]

From my own experience I would have to agree with "the Recreational Golfer" that the overhead statistics are just the beginning. But it is the place to start. The contention that you already know your own game isn't necessarily true and until you learn exactly where and in want proportion you are leaking strokes you can't begin to fix it. With my recent decision to attempt to revive my own game from my hc of mid 20s to my hc of 14 in my younger years, I began by keeping just basic stuff; Fairways hit, GIR, putts, # saves from chips/pitchs/sand, and penalty shots. As you would suspect these data illustrated I needed work everywhere (mid 20s hc isn't a good player) but given the data you can decide where to begin and monitor and see (hopefully) the improvement. Since golf can be discouraging at times this latter attribute of keeping statistics is important. It is important as I found you can improve performance in one area and not change your scores much. So other than put everyone to sleep I'll just say over the last 6 months I have been getting better at those attributes I chose to work on first and yesterday played the best round I have played in the last 6 months. No OBs, No unplayables, saved 5/14 missed greens for par (albeit missing 14/18 wasn't great) and only one 3 putt green. So far I am a believer in keep track of the overhead statistics and making informed decisions on where to improve your game with your limited practice time.

[saevel25]

FIR: 33%
GIR: 44%
Birdies: 10%
Pars: 44%
Bogey: 40%
Double Bogey: 5%
Over: 1%

Putting:
Putts per Round: 32
Putts per hole: 1.78