Improving Your Golf Score - Part 1

Golf is perhaps one of my favorite hobbies. When I first started out I wanted to find someway to be able to track and quantify my improvements over time. I came up with an easy way to see how I was improving and how to identify things I needed to improve on. I would gather data on every shot that I took on the golf course, then I would analyze it, and then hit the driving range with the new information. Getting the data for the analyzing is simple and easy - all you need is what you already have, the scorecard and a pencil.

What I am about to show you helped me get my handicap down from 35+ to ~20 in 6 months of golfing about 3-4 times a week. It is not for the weak hearted as it is completely and brutally honest. For best results, do not exclude any shots that you take - even that shot from the brush where the pine cone went further than the ball.

It only takes about 30 minutes to input all the data into a program like Excel to do all the work. While you could just glance at the scorecard and see what you did wrong that day, because of all the variables you are going to want to keep track of how you do over a period of time. You want 3-5 rounds of golf to see how your golf game truly looks and then use that to see what you need to practice on.

If you keep with this and do it every round of golf you will start noticing a trend of your score going down. There will be days where your irons just aren't hitting the ball, or the greens are way faster than last time, or your driver just can't seem to turn over and you're slicing into the woods, but you'll start to notice that those become rarer and rarer where when you actually do hit something like that, it's a surprise and not an expectation.

I. Data Gathering

___A) What you need:

______i. If you're golfing with somebody else you might want to grab an extra scorecard because this is where you will be jotting down your data.

______ii. Pencil.

___B) Setting up the scorecard:

There are 2 versions of setting up the scorecard. The first is for a new player or a player with a high handicap. This version will allow them just to see which type of clubs they need to focus on. The second version is for people that need way more detail and specifics to see what they need to improve.

If your handicap is 23 or higher, I would just stick to the first version because all in all you need to improve everything overall. If your handicap is less than 23, I recommend doing the more detailed version.

______i. Simple/Starting Out/High Handicap set up: Just starting out, what I would do is just have one row for your total hits per hole, as usual. Under that have one row for "Drives," the one directly under that do one for "Fairway," another for, "Irons," one for "Putts," one for "GIR (Green in Regulation)," and other variables you may want to track.

______ii. If you get the hang of the Simple set up, or you have a real low handicap and you need more detailed data what you can do is split up your "Irons" variable into long/short/wedges and if you want, you could do one for each club you use, but that gets too messy.

___C) Gathering the Data:

______i. For each shot that you take, make a note of it on your scorecard. If you shanked that tee shot and you take 3 off the tee, mark that (note: mark that as 2 tee shots rather than three because of that one shot penalty). Make sure to mark whether or not you get on the fairway or not as this is really what you're trying to keep track off to see how much practice you need on tee shots. For par 3 tee shots if you make it on the green make sure to mark both "Fairway" and "GIR."

______ii. Fairway and GIR Marking. The "fairway" and "GIR" variables are binomial variables, meaning you can only be on the fairway or not be on the fairway, just like flipping a coin; it's either heads or it's tails - 2 outcomes. If your tee shot makes it on the fairway, mark it as a '1', if you miss the fairway, mark it with a '0'.

Example:

______Hole 1__Hole 2

______Par 4___Par 5

Score:___6_____6

Drives:__1_____1

Fway:_ __0_____1

Irons:___3_____2

Putts:___2_____3

Gor:__ __0_____1

Reading the example:

On Hole 1, par 4, my drive missed the fairway so I had to knock it out of the rough which made me have to hit at least one extra iron shot so that I could not GIR the hole.

On Hole 2, par 5, my drive was much better, I landed in the fairway. The fairway drive set me up for 2 solid iron shots so I could get to the green in regulation (gir). However, I three putted so I could not par the hole.

Do not lose this card because you need it to see your improvement over time. The first round of golf is just a starting point. As you know, there are lots of variables that come into play while golfing, like the wind, course difficulty, etc. which means you will need 3-5 rounds of golf to get a more accurate picture of your golf game.

Stay tuned for the next part which will cover what you need to do after your round of golf.