Of all the statistics that are kept in golf, what is the most important?  I know when I play a round of golf I will actively keep my fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts per hole, and sand saves.  From the first three round statistics I can than find many other helpful statistics.....
Some of the other statistics I can find through FIR, GIR, and Putts are:

1. Putts per hole
2. Putts per green in regulation
3. Scrambling (up and downs from greens missed)
4. GIR from fairways hit
5. GIR from fairways missed
6. Holes between 3 putts
7. Birdies per GIR
8. Birdies per fairway hit
9. Birdies per fairway missed
10. 3 putts per GIR

The list could actually grow bigger but I will stop it at 10.  Of these what is the most helpful and what does it tell me?  For me, the initial three are all extremely important.  If you are missing fairways and greens and having lots of putts, you are most certainly not going to perform very well.  That being said your next practice session should be pretty easy.

So here's my opinion on the stats.  The most important to me, by far, are the putting stats.  Putts per round, putts per hole, and putts per GIR.  Of those the most important is Putts per GIR.  Last year on the Greal Lakes Tour I had a Putts per GIR stat of 1.84 which was horrific to my standards and i was hitting 10.84 GIR per round (which was also below standards).  The best players on average are around 1.65 to 1.70 Putts per GIR.  I was not converting enough birdie chances.  However, the good news is, my 3 putts were way down and my scrambling statistic was very good.  So my scoring at times was decent.  After analyzing those stats, my goal and main practice will be around my short game.  2010 goal is to have a 1.70 Putts per GIR and have GIR of 12.  FIR is a great stat to gauge my driving but can be deceiving as to the quality of driving.  Some days I drive it great but miss a handful of fairways.  So I really only use FIR to see how many GIR I hit off of missed fairways and hit fairways.

So, if you are an amateur, stats are a great way to analyze your game.  First thing to do is keep the basic stats, than once they improve, start going more in depth and see where you really break down.  For example, if you average a score of 85 you most likely have 9/18 GIR, 8/14 FIR, and Putts per round of 34.  If you would like to shoot 80 you would need to improve the stats to, FIR of 9/14, GIR of 11/18 and Putts per round of 32.  The idea is to analyze each stat and make your practice revolve around these stats.  Than in our next round we try to have stats that were better than the day before.. 

What stat is your most important and why is it so helpful to you?
 


Comments

Bruce Howard link
04/25/2010 9:08pm

Hi Jim,
PuttingZone Canada has an excellent Stat sheet that is available to subscribers.

I think a stat sheet makes you think about your game and sets intent to improve a part of ones game that needs attention.

If you are hitting greens and having a high putts per green average you need to know if you need to hit it closer to make more one putts, so distance of first putts and from what position on the green you are putting from is very important. i.e. are the majority of first putts are below the hole or above it. Using PuttingZone Canada's putting methods helps improve these stats amazingly.

hope this helps some of your bloggers.

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