The Schrug

I am a 29.4 handicap: a decidedly mediocre golfer. And yet in many ways, I am actually pretty decent. I can hit a drive 250 yards into the fairway. I can hit a sand wedge 100 yards, and an 8-iron 150. I can fade and draw the ball. I can get out of greenside and fairway bunkers. I can sink 15-foot putts and I can lag 40-foot putts close enough to tap in. So why am I not shooting in the low 80’s? Because for all those “I can” statements I just made, I have to append the word “sometimes.”

Many golf instruction books and magazines advise you to keep statistics other than your raw scores to track the progress of your game improvement. The idea is that by looking at your stats you’ll be able to identify the parts of your game that need the most work. Here are a couple of examples:

• NetHandicap, which is what tells me I’m a 29.4 handicap, lets me record for each hole …
• Drive distance
• Fairway hit (yes/no)
• Green in regulation (yes/no, meaning did I reach the green in par minus two strokes)
• Putts (total number)
• Bunker shots (yes/no – assumes no more than one bunker hit per hole!)
• Penalty strokes (total number)
• Intelligolf, which I use on my Smartphone during the round to keep score, allows me to track the same basic stats plus …
• Number of shots or putts missed long, short, left, or right
• Distance of putts made and missed
• Ups and downs (essentially, the number of one-putts)

I’ve decided, though, that many of those statistics are misleading or unhelpful.

• Drive distance is meaningless without consideration of accuracy. I’ll take a 175-yard drive in the fairway over a 225-yard drive in the woods any day.
• Number of putts is meaningless without consideration of putt lengths and how you came to be putting in the first place. I rarely make more than 36 putts a round, but because the accuracy of my approaches is so poor, I often find myself chipping on to a short putt rather than hitting a long approach to a two-putt. Which would you rather have, a 5 with 2 putts or an 8 with one putt?
• Greens in regulation are so rare for me that they don’t tell me much about my overall game.
• Greens are overrated. Being in the first cut of fringe is perfectly acceptable, as you can usually putt or have a well-controlled chip from there.
• Intelligolf’s shot-by-shot tracking can be helpful but it takes too much time and concentration during the play of each hole. Whatever stats I’m going to keep, I need to be able to remember and record them between the time I pick the ball out of the cup and the time I’m ready for my next tee shot.

As a result, I’ve come up with a new set of statistics that I hope will help me narrow in on the weakest parts of my game. For each hole, I’m going to track:

• Tee shot decency. Have I given myself a chance for a decent score with my tee shot? For par-3 holes, this means whether or not I hit the green or fringe. For par-4’s and par-5’s, it means whether or not I hit the fairway or first cut of rough. I’m not looking for perfection, just disaster avoidance.
• First reasonable approach. It’s heartbreaking to nail your drive into the fairway with 140 yards left to the flag and then put the next one into a hazard or deep rough. But I do that kind of thing all the time. On the other hand, I don’t really expect to hit the green with a 5-wood or even a 5-iron or to be very accurate from bad lies. So the question I’m asking here is: On my first attempt with a 7-iron or less from the fairway or first cut and a clear shot at the green, am I able to hit the green or fringe? If I’m failing at this, I’m squandering shots for no good reason. I’ll track of this stat on all par-4’s and 5’s and on par-3’s shorter than 175 yards.
• Total shots under 100 yards. Really this number should never be more than three per hole, from all but the absolute worst lies. If I’m averaging much more than that, then it will be clear that I need to find a range where I can practice my short game.
• Makeable putts made. I’m not talking about gimmes here, I’m talking about those 3-10 footers. The ones that you stand over and think “I should be able to make this.” I have no specific distance in mind here, as it all depends on the slope and condition of the green. A missed makeable putt is a wasted shot.
• Three-putts. A two-putt can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how long the first putt was. But a three-putt is almost always a bad thing. And I’m going to include putts from the fringe as well as on the green.
• Balls out of play. This stat will include balls in hazards, out of bounds, lost, or hit into unplayable lies. Any of the above pretty much guarantees at least a double-bogey and must be avoided, and I think this will be more telling and easier to track than “penalty strokes.” The main thing here is to find out how much of my score is resulting from big mistakes as opposed to small ones.
• Successful recoveries. The ability to get from the woods, deep rough, or fairway bunker back into the fairway can be the difference between a 6 and a 9. This will be a measure of my intelligence as well as my accuracy.
• Flubs. I don’t really have a sense right now of how often I’m completely mis-hitting the ball as opposed to striking it well but not well enough. This will be my count of hitting it way fat, topping it, shanking it. chunking it, smothering it, flying it from the bunker way over the green, leaving it in the bunker, whiffing, stubbing, or otherwise making very poor contact. I’m not going to include bad pulls, slices, or alignment mistakes if I hit them cleanly. If this number stays high, I’ll probably need lessons rather than practice.

I’ll be recording these stats onto a paper grid that I print out on each round and carry with me on the course. Then I’ll enter the raw numbers into a yet-do-be determined database for totaling and analysis. If it’s not too embarrassing, I’ll track my progress here.

If there are any other high handicappers reading this, I’d love to hear about similar stats that you’ve come up with and that are helping you improve your game, so please comment.