Three Important Stats Every Golfer Should Track and Improve

Stats have taken over the modern sports landscape. With the rapid expansion of technology in the 21^st century, it’s become possible to capture and track statistics that simply could not be measured just a generation ago.

It was only a matter of time before the statistical revolution reached the game of golf.

As any serious golfer knows, it’s now possible to track such statistics as launch angle, ball speed, club head speed, and many more with just a quick trip to your local driving range.

While those high-tech stats have their use, we are going to spend this article talking about some more traditional statistical measures of performance on the golf course. Specifically, we are going to highlight three stats that the average golfer can easily track using nothing more than a scorecard or notebook.

For a more “hands-off” approach, you can also use a system like Shot Scope to track your statistics automatically while playing.

Regardless of how it’s done, through the process of tracking these stats, you should be able to spot weaknesses and work on correcting the problems that are preventing you from reaching your potential on the course.

Stat #1 – Three Putt Percentage

While it’s pretty common for golfers to track their total number of putts during a round, we’d like to point you in a slightly different direction.

Counting total putts can be somewhat deceiving, as even a good putter is going to record a high number of putts if he or she is left with long putts throughout the round. Likewise, a low number of putts could have more to do with poor ball striking and good chipping than it does the quality of a player’s putting performance.

Given the problems with counting total putts, we are suggesting that you track three putt greens instead.

Each time you three putt a green, make a mark on your scorecard or in a notebook that you use for golf stats. At the end of each round, add up those marks and compare the total to how many greens you hit in regulation.

So, if you hit 10 greens in regulation and three putted one of them, that would be a three putt percentage of 10%.

On the PGA Tour, the best putters keep their rate in this category under 2%, while most players are between 2% – 3%. For the average golfer, keeping it down around 5% would be an excellent effort.

What if you keep track of this stat and find that your percentage is too high? There are two main causes of three putt greens:

1. Poor Distance Control

Hitting your first putt too hard or not hard enough is going to put a lot of pressure on your next putt. If you find yourself regularly three putting during your rounds, spend some practice time working on distance control on your longer putts.

2. Shaky Short Putting

Even a good lag putt isn’t going to pay off if you aren’t able to knock in that second putt to finish off the hole.

Short putting is something that you should work on regularly anyway, but it’s especially important when you are three putting frequently.

Stat #2 – Fairways Hit

This is a classic stat, and it might seem out of date in today’s game. We disagree, however.

Hitting fairways will always be a positive, even with some players today opting to hit it as far as possible and find it later. For the average golfer, getting the ball in the short grass more often is a huge advantage.

To track fairways hit, of course, you just note whether or not you hit the fairway on each par four and par five hole. So, on a typical par-72 layout, you will likely hit 14 tee shots that are hoping to find the fairway. If you manage to hit 7 of them, you’ll be sitting at 50%.

In addition to tracking how many you hit, one other recommendation is to track whether you missed right or left on the holes where you didn’t find the fairway.

This information can be extremely valuable when trying to improve your game moving forward. For example, if you find that of those 7 fairways you missed above, 6 of them were missed to the right, there will be an obvious pattern to address.

Why are you missing right? Is there an alignment problem at address, or is your ball flight pattern leading you to the right of the fairway?

You’ll be able to more quickly zero in on the problem when you have the data in front of you.

Stat #3 – Average Score Per Hole Type

Is it an easy stat to track because you can do the work after the round is over – you don’t have to make any special notes during the round itself, other than keeping score as you would normally. If you would like, you can create a simple spreadsheet to keep track of this data set as it grows.

The idea is to track your average score on par threes, par fours, and par fives. Once you have at least a few rounds of data to work with, you can check out these averages and see how they compare to each other.

Are you playing one type of hole significantly worse than the others? Why might that be?

You may be surprised to find what kind of patterns can be spotted that you would have missed without keeping track of these numbers.

As a quick note on this stat, remember that par five holes are naturally the easiest and par threes are the hardest. So, don’t be surprised if you are best relative to par on the par fives and worst on the par threes. However, if you see that your par five scores are actually the worst of the lot relative to par, you will know something is going wrong on those long holes.

Perhaps you are being too aggressive and making big mistakes?

Think about your game and what these numbers represent about your playing style.

Just tracking the three stats above can go a long way toward providing meaningful insights into your performance on the course. Don’t put too much stock in stats collected during just one round – these numbers are going to be far more meaningful after at least a few rounds have been played.