What Are the Most Important Golf Stats to Record?

When you start playing golf, stats matter little to nothing to you unless you are an analytical type of person. However, as time goes by and you get better, you come to terms with the fact that golf is a type of game that with every single bit of advantage you get, you increase the chances of coming out on top of the competition. 

Even if you are not actually competing, but playing with friends or family, you can still appreciate that shaving extra shots off your round does no harm. So, here we are going to tell you which stats matter the most in case you want to start recording them.

Driver Stats

You may be inclined to believe that those shots that either end in the rough, or at least not in the fairway area are the ones that tarnish the overall score of the game. While having the ball land in hazards or out of bounds does hurt results, not always having the ball land in the rough is necessarily bad, and having the ball travel the longest distance after a drive is not always rightfully the best option either.

‘Fairways hit’ is the stat that matters the most to a fair amount of people. It measures how often a tee on a par 4 or par 5 lands in the fairway, disregarding the employed club. While this stat is efficient, it doesn’t actually tell you as much about the quality of your drives. As an example, the ball may land in light rough but still leave you better off than if it lands in the fairway. Yet, by the standards of this stat, you are inefficient.

Instead, you should focus on how many ‘major driving mistakes’ you commit throughout your matches. These include having the ball either land out of bounds, in hazards, or in bunkers. The lesser the number of balls landing on these terrains, the better your results will be.

Some ways to fix common driving mistakes are choosing different lines, experimenting with different clubs, and improving technique as a whole. By implementing these fixes, and utilizing the mentioned stat, you will most likely see results in the near future.

Par-3’s That Leave You Closer to the Green (Percentage of Par-3 Greens in Regulation)

First off we are going to put into layman's terms what is a Green in Regulation, or GIR. Hitting one means that you take two or fewer strokes than the average scoring par for a given hole to put the ball on a green. For instance, if you are playing a par 4 hole, that means that you need to put it on the green area within 2 shots.

In the case of par 3 Greens in Regulation, you need to put the ball in the green with one single, crisp and clean shot. By compiling the number of times the ball lands on the green of a par 3 hole with one shot you can measure this stat.

Nevertheless, you can easily tell that this is not a type of stat that is recommended for a beginner to compile, as landing proper Greens in Regulation is a very difficult task for newbies. This means that you should only pay attention to this statistic every time you stumble upon a par 3 if you are a somewhat seasoned golfer. As a complement, you ought to write down which irons you use that give you the best results under these circumstances.

If you are a beginner, a good idea is to calculate in the best of cases landing 1 or 2 greens per round. You have to bear in mind that even experienced, professional golfers struggle with this, so be kind to yourself if this is your current situation and you don’t achieve the outcomes you expect yet.

Close Distance Missed Chipping

If you are not acquainted with chipping, it is a shot that belongs to the family of short shots, in the company of pitching. The former is when the ball rolls farther than it flies, while the latter is the opposite. These are types of shots that get you closer to the hole. If you can reduce how many mistakes you make when chipping the ball closer to the hole, you’ll reduce the number of shots you need to get the ball in.

If you want to measure your chipping stats, you can start off by measuring the amount of missed chipping shots you have within 30 to 50 yards, and progressively increase the measuring distance as you become more adept with chipping. In general, the fewer shots it takes you to chip the ball closer to the hole, the better.

3-Putts

3-putts are every golf player’s nightmare. These unlawful sightings happen when a player takes 3 shots inside the green area to put the ball in the hole. These are considered big mistakes that usually happen when you are under pressure.

Despite that 3-putts are the white elephant in the room, they sometimes happen under particular situations, like after hitting long putts, or hitting them after having hit a decent Green in Regulation. Hence, 3-putt stats should be taken with a grain of salt.

You should measure 3-putts if your sole objective is to become razor sharp at putting, but you must still regard other areas of your game. Otherwise, your overall playing quality will inevitably fall by the wayside.

Should I Pay Attention to My Stats?

If you are starting out, you are better off focusing on technique and getting plentiful hours of practice under the belt in lieu of recording stats. Once you become more experienced, or if you already possess experience, but become somewhat stagnant, then you should start recording stats to garner a better picture of the concrete moments when you make more mistakes.