Stats you should be tracking (and why they’re important)

Keeping score is not enough

Keeping score is important, but it’s just not enough. Although I don’t love facing that total score number sometimes, I know that keeping score is important for me to track my progress towards my goals.

Many beginner golfers are just in it to have fun and don’t keep score at all. Keeping score can make someone nervous or put a pressure on them they feel they don’t want to have yet. And that’s totally OK! But as time goes on, you may want to keep score and compete with yourself to see your own improvement.

How do you improve? What to work on first? With so many different skills that you need to master to improve your golf game, how do you know which skill to focus on? Which specific skill area will give you the biggest return on your scorecard? Should you focus on perfecting your drive? Should you dial in your iron distances? Should you practice more putting and chipping?

The answer lies in your golf stats. Here we are exploring which stats to track and why. You’ll also find a round reflection template that you can personalize and use to track your own stats!

Fairways hit

Fairways hit is the first stat to cover - this one is pretty straightforward. When you tee off, how often does your ball land in the fairway? This stat is only kept for Par 4’s and Par 5’s, since Par 3’s you are trying to hit the green from the tee box.

If your ball doesn’t land in the fairway, has it gone left or has it gone right?

Sometimes when you are just starting out, your drive off the tee might not even make it to the fairway. That’s the worst when it gets caught in the rough just before the fairway.

When you keep track of this stat, you can work with your golf instructor and make corrections for a hook (ball goes way left) or a slice (ball goes way right).

Greens in regulation

Hitting a green in regulation means the following:

• Par 3’s - regulation is 1 stroke to hit the green

• Par 4’s - regulation is 2 strokes to hit the green

• Par 5’s - regulation is 3 strokes to hit the green

To explain in a bit more detail and give an example. On a Par 3, if you landed in the rough just off the green, chip onto the green, and then take 2 putts for a total score of 4 strokes or bogey. Good bogey! In this case you did not hit the green in regulation (2 strokes to hit the green vs regulation is 1 stroke). So you would mark an X or maybe a little down arrow showing that you missed the green short.

I actually have an easier time hitting Par 5’s in regulation because a par 5 from the forward tees is typically 450-500 yards. With my drive being 150 yards, and my longest iron also traveling that far, it’s not a stretch for me to reach the green in 3 strokes.

When you are trying to build consistency into your game, this stat is another really important one. It is going to help you understand whether you selected the right clubs or not for each shot. It’s a guide for a discussion with your golf instructor about course management, your distances with your driver, irons and wedges, and what the overall best strategy is for you to reach the green in regulation.

In the GHIN app you can track your score & your stats. For example, you can track whether you missed the green OVER, SHORT, LEFT or RIGHT and see the trends over time. For the longest time I was always missing greens short. But then one day I started missing them long, or over the green. And actually I did a little happy dance every time I missed the green OVER, because I knew I could just use less club next time I played that hole.

Counting putts

This is possibly the most important stat if you want to improve your score. “Drive for show, putt for dough” is the saying. When it comes down to scoring, golfers who dial in their short game fair very well.

The goal here is to minimize 3-putts, as the target number of putts on every golf hole is 2.

When you breakdown your stats, count how many of your strokes were putts? If you break down an even par round, half of the strokes are putts. How many of us practice putting half of the time?

Track your stats

If you have an official handicap index and use the GHIN app you can keep track of all of these stats fairly easily. If not, I have a template that you can use, below. Just record your stats right on your scorecard, and then tally them up and put them into the template after your round. Then when you have played 5 or 10 rounds and want to work with a golf instructor, you can look at your trends together and decide what is best for you to work on at that time.

You can use free mobile apps like 18 birdies, The Grint, Garmin Golf, SwingU… etc. But these apps often tease you with free tracking and then they want you to subscribe to get all the features. So I recommend just paying for the USGA GHIN app (roughly $45 per year) and you get a handicap, on-course GPS yardage, and you can track all your stats!

Create your own stat tracker from my template

You can go low-tech and zero subscription fees and still get the right data you need to improve over time. Simply write your golf stats directly onto golf scorecard, and input them later. Here’s an example. FW = fairways hit, GIR = greens in regulation, and the little tally marks represent putts.

I literally have a pile of these chicken scratch scorecards. Then after the round you can put the stats into the google sheet tracker. Here is the link - it’s a google sheet and when you click it you will have to copy it to your google drive to make it your own.

You can absolutely track different courses on this tracker, but I strongly recommend in the beginning that you track your scores for one single course that you play repeatedly throughout a season.

Takeaway

Don’t just track your overall score. If you are serious about improving, track your stats - fairways hit, greens in regulation and number of putts. This will help you know exactly where to focus your skill improvement first. This can also be a great tool to use when you talk with your golf instructor as it gives them specific information about how you are performing.

Real life application: I started working with a golf instructor in the spring. The first few lessons were focused on my drive. When I got that mastered, the question was: what’s next? I explained to my instructor that I had trouble making the green in regulation. After some discussion, he determined that I needed more launch in my approach shots. Making these little adjustments helps ensure my ball lands on the green and sits - instead of landing and running all the way across the green and having a huge putt to come back to the pin.

Don’t count yourself out of this or think that you’re “not good enough” to start tracking this. Trust me, you are! And you can really learn a lot about your game and where your improvement needs to happen.

Do you track your stats? What app do you use? Do you agree that it’s helpful to do this? Comment to let me know!