The 6 golf stats golf beginners should track to lower their scores

The Golf Score

Keeping track of your score is an easy task, right? Just count how many strokes you took on a hole and write the cumulative total on the hole you just competed on your score card with a pencil. Add up each value on each hole for the 18 holes. Simple right?

Yes! That should be all you should focus on when you are beginning to learn the game. There are some additional statistics I recommend you track to help you improve and determine if you want to lower your score. Your cumulative score for a 18-hole round of golf may not show you what area of your game you need to focus on. Where are you losing the most strokes on each whole? Is your short game costing you? Do your drives off the tee need improvement? Or, are you missing easy putts you feel you should have easily made?. Let’s explore what I am talking about and the different options marking your scorecard or using a electronic device to do it for you.

Some people prefer to do it manually on the course, then collect all the stats they’ve recorded and track it that way. Others would rather let a app on their phone do all the calculations for them. Golf can be analyzed and studied to excess, or it can be done in a broad effort that matches what you want to work on. Remember, take on what interests you and don’t over do it at first. Let’s take a look at some of the options shall we?

Tracking stats on a score card

Tracking your number of strokes is pretty straight forward. They’re a number of different things to consider gathering stats regarding your game to understand what area warrants focus and more practice to improve. The level of detail in the beginning can be too much for those just learning the game. Start slow and begin to work your way up to a level that doesn’t distract you from playing the game and having fun. As you improve and want to understand what part of your game is holding you back, tracking the recommended stats below will start to tell you a story about your performance. Golf shot statistical information collected about your journey around the course is a treasure trove of valuable information that you can’t see one shot to the next. You can see things in aggregate you cannot see in the moment standing over the ball.

There is an amazing amount of data that is tracked about the professional golfer in every PGA tournament played using a technology called “Shot Link”. Shot Link’s mission statement is:

“Turn data into information, information into knowledge, knowledge into entertainment”

For you, keep it simple at first and turn the knowledge you are gaining into improvement. You won’t need the same level of detail as professional golfers. Beginners can drastically improve their game with simple tracking efforts by hand. If you are a bit more inclined towards technology and want to embrace what is available, there are affordable options that can be acquired. Hopefully, you get the idea that even a little bit of information will help you improve when you are ready, reaching a plateau, and want to learn everything you can about your performance.

Recommended 6 stats to track to improve your game

1. Fairways
2. Greens
3. Putts
4. Sand Traps & Bunkers
5. Penalties
6. Pars and Birdies

You can see on the scorecard example above a lot of numbers. Learning what it all means is important. Let’s break it down to solidify your understanding ok? Notice the 5 colored columns in the picture of above.

Columns by color

• Green column – The Hole

• Black column – Professional Tee

• Blue column – Championship Tee

• White column – Resort Tee

• Red Column – Forward Tee

The green column is basically the hole you are playing. They will be numbered 1 through 18. See, I told you, straight forward. The Black, Blue, White, and Red columns are the tees you will find on the tee box and the distance in yards for that particular hole. Let’s look at the first hole. The distance for the black tees is 433 yards, for the blues it’s 398 yards, the whites are 379 yards, and the reds its 361 yards.

What does that mean? As a beginner, most men play from the white tees. Women and teens usually play from the red tees. Don’t be surprised or offended if you see someone playing at any of the tees. Skill levels vary and under estimating someone based on the tee they play from can be misleading. Especially if you decide to play competitive golf and establish a USGA Handicap Index. You may also see someone playing from tees way above their skill level. That is ok too if they keep their place of play. Sometimes, the ego needs to learn the hard way. Hopefully, you won’t get stuck behind some one who doesn’t understand this concept just yet. We’ll talk about how to handle a situation like this in my Golf Etiquette 201 post.

The Championship tees are for low-handicap golfers. The Blue and White tees are for middle to high handicap players, and the Red Tees are for higher handicap players. Each tee box is marked with two markers.

The USGA defines the Teeing Area as a rectangle two clubs lengths deep where:

1. The front edge is defined by the line between the forward-most points of two tee markers set by the committee, and
2. the side edges are defined back from the outside points of the tee markers

Now, for the last two columns in the example score card above. The light green column indicates what Par is for the hole. The dark green column is the ranking of the hole on the course. This ranking is called the hole handicap. Each hole is ranked from 1 to 18. 1 being the hardest hole on the course 18 being the easiest. This isn’t the same thing as a golf handicap index. We’ll touch on establishing a handicap index soon I promise.

Fairway

We’ve lightly mentioned the different parts of the hole, but let’s refresh just a bit ok. The fairway is the shorter grass from the tee box to the green. It’s where you want to hit your drives to create the best approach shot to the green. The shorter grass is easier to get the club face on the ball for an approach shot. Not having grass getting in between the ball and club face allows you create spin on the ball and control the trajectory of your shots predictably. Tracking the number of fairways you hit off the tee tells you how accurate your drives are.

Hitting your drives eft or right of the fairway tells you whether you are hooking or slicing the ball. Good golfers will be able to take this information and hit the range to work out swing adjustments to correct a hook or slice.

So, tracking every time you hit your drive on a fairway is the first stat to track. Putting an “F” under the hole is a common way to capture this. You do it for the hole number 1, and continue all the way until you reach 18. Add up all the fairways hit for the round and total on the score card like some of the examples I share below. If you don’t hit a fairway you don’t have to write down anything.

Greens

Hitting your approach shot on the green may take awhile to accomplish, but eventually you will build your confidence and find the green more often than not. Generally, a scratch golfer is able to get their approach shot onto the green with some degree of regularity. Once on the green, the goal is to position the ball as close to the hole as possible to ensure their 4th stroke is an easy par. Professional golfers aim for the pin to give themselves the best chance to make a birdie.

Tracking your greens can be easily done by add a “G” in the same box on the score card where the “F” goes. If you don’t hit the fairway on a hole, sometimes you may only end up with a G.

Putts

The number of putts to get the ball in the hole is probably one of the most valuable stats to track. You will quickly this is where most beginners pick up most of their strokes. There is a lot of information to take in on the greens. The speed of the greens, the grain, the break of the putt, and whether or not you are putting up hill or downhill. You will see professional golfers looking at a book they carry in their back pocket usually managed by their caddie to show them the best place to land their ball on the green. A key metric for me during a round is to not make an 3 putts. 3 putts are generally an indicator of an unforced error on a shot leading up to the green.

In the beginning, you may find your number of putts may be a much larger number than 3.

I give two examples below for you to reference how to track the number of putts. You can do the exponent method and write the number of putts to the upper right of the hole score, or you can dedicate a line below the score under the Fairway and Greens line. It’s your choice and preference.

Sand Trap and Bunkers

I can promise you will find your self in the sand. It can be a humbling place to be. Hitting out of the sand is a tricky skill depending on the shot you are trying to make. Your ability to get the ball out of sand will depend on many factors not covered here, but it’s important to track your visits to the sand and your results.

Sand stats can be tracked in the same space where you track your fairways and greens. Let’s say you hit the fairway, but land in the sand trap protecting the green on your second shot. I recommend putting an “S” next to the “F” so it looks like this “FS”.

Penalties

There are a number of reasons you want to track extra strokes you must take due to hitting the ball out of bounds (OB), or into a lateral hazard such as water. There are far too many penalties for me to list them all in this post, but tracking them will help you later on. You will be able to learn a lot about the course you are playing for your next round, and you’ll be able create a strategy about where not to hit the ball and areas to avoid for a future round.

• Lost Balls – I am suggesting for you track the number of balls you lose for a good reason. Not to save you money per say, but to keep track of where you lost them. Part of this tracking effort is learning a course characteristics and connecting the lost ball to your mental game. We haven’t touched much on the mental game yet, but this will be a topic of learning to “let go” and “reset” your expectations as you play from shot to shot. Not too many people want to talk about blowing up on the course mentally, but I promise you it does happen, and you will have to face your own version of it.

• Bogies, Doubles, and Triples – Not making par is something in the beginning phases of golf will be something that happens regularly, but tracking bogies, double bogies, and triple bogies is important to learn to appreciate the par.

Pars and Birdies

The fun part of tracking stats is for the good things that “will” come as you learn the game. There will be moments when you do something you never thought you could do! When that happens it will spur you forward and motivate you in ways you never thought possible. Make multiple pars in a row, your first birdie, and even your first eagle will stay with you always. You will tell the story on the 19th hole (drink after a round), or with a newer golfer to pay it forward and inspire them.

Manual Scorecard

There are many ways to tally your results as you play your round. Above is an example you can use to record your results. Did you notice how I only counted strokes over par to record my score versus putting the number of strokes? I find it easy to just add up the strokes over par and add them to the 9 hole aggregate and 18 hole aggregate to calculate my front and back nine scores for 18 holes. If I made a par I enter a “0” on the hole. If I make a birdie I write down a “-1”. Bogies are a “1”, and anything above like a double would be a “2” or triple would be a “3”.

• Fairways – You can see right away that an “F” under the hole played means that I hit in a fairway. If there is a hash mark (-) I didn’t hit the green. If it has a (-) only, then I didn’t hit the fairway or green
  • You can see I hit 4 fairways on the front 9 and 3 fairways on the back nine for a total of 7 fairways for 18 holes.

• Greens – You will also notice on some holes I have a “G” next to the “F”. You may also notice that if I have a F and G below I usually made a par. Something to pay attention to for later.
  • I hit only one green on the front nine and 4 greens on the back nine for a total of 5 greens for 18 holes.

• Putts (Option 1) – There are two ways that some track their number of putts. One method is to write the number of putts as a smaller number in the upper right corner where I recorded the strokes for the hole, which I did in the first score card example #1 above for the Quivera Course in Cabo. I had 15 putts on the front 9 and 15 putts on the back 9 for a total of 30 putts.

• Putts (Option 2) – The second way to track putts that is more readable like I did for score card example #2 at the Bay Course at Kapalua. I had 17 putts on the front 9 and 16 putts on the back 9 for a total of 33 putts. It’s a lot easier to read the number of putts in this case, but if you are playing with 3 other golfers you may not have enough space on the card to record your stats.

• Sand & Bunkers – In the scorecard example #3 above you will see the holes I ended up in the sand (Hole #1 and Hole #13). I marked the the holes by writing a “S”. I was able to get up and down to make a sand save for par. I’ve shot some of my best scores in the desert and broke 80 for the first time in Las Vegas.

Once you get all of this information gathered and summarized you can start to study what you need to focus on. How do you do that you ask? Great question! A good place to start is to use Excel to transfer your data from your scorecard to electronic format. Yikes, does that mean you have to learn how to use Excel to and create a golf stat tracker? My answer, only if that is something you would prefer to do. If you do a quick Google search for “golf stats tracker excel spreadsheet”, plenty of templates will show up in your search criteria. You can download one and use for free.

I haven’t included all the stats that are available in some of the spreadsheets in this post, but there is a lot of great information and Excel formulas to help you track things for every round you have played like:

• FW% – Fairways Hit Percentage
• GIR% – Greens in Regulation Pecentage
• Putts per Round
• Total number of Pars
• Total number of Birdies
• Total number of Eagles
• Total number of Bogies
• Total number of Double Bogies
• Total number of Triple Bogies

Manual tracking of stats is a the most cost effective route to go, but using a mobile app or dedicated device for tracking your stats is the least amount of effort in my opinion. I will briefly touch on this below.

Electronic Scorecards

There are several popular options out there that to track your game with GPS enabled devices you can use on your phone, smart watch, or on a dedicated device with a large screen for easy viewing. I will review both of the devices mentioned below in a product review.

There are better and more comprehensive mobile apps to consider.

SkyCaddie by SkyGolf

I am not an expert on SkyCaddie, but it’s the probably on of the most recognized golf products that has been around a long time. I see a lot of golfers who use the hand held and the watch together to track their stats with little to no effort. These devices allow the golfer to focus on playing, while they use SkyCaddie to help them assess playing one shot at a time. A short list of features is below and there is even more features than I’ve noted. Check out the video below.

They even have a watch you can integrate to work with your dedicated device. They also have a mobile app you can purchase.

• Course Maps can be download
• GPS information to track your shots from Tee to Green
• Golf Club Used
• View of Hazards on the hole
• Distance from the Tee
• Distance to the front, middle, and back of green

Golfshot by Shotzoom

I personally have used the mobile app called Golfshot. You can download it for IOS or Android App stores for free. There are paid subscription fees and you can cancel at any time. It tracks just about everything you would want to know without having to mark down much on the app. For a beginner, it might be the first place to start before you upgrade to a dedicated device.

• Fairways
• GIR%
• Recovery – Sand saves
• Putts
• Pars
• Scoring Average

Let’s Sum it all up

Some golfers like to keep things simple and pure. Others what as much data that is available to them about their performance. You can be as specific as you like or feel you need, or you can just get out there and put a number on your scorecard. It’s really all up to you personal preference and learning needs. Whatever choice you make will be the right one for you and where you are on your golf journey.

Sometimes, keeping track of your score is not the point. You may find yourself having a bad day on keeping score is just making the round un-enjoyable. Trust me, I’ve been there and when that does happen I shift my focus to the beauty of the course, the people I am playing with, and challenging myself to playing one shot at a time. You might not break the course record today, but changing your mindset is something you can control in a game that sometimes has you more than you have it.