Unlocking Your Potential: A Beginner's Guide to Stats
Golf is a hard sport, especially when just starting out. Stats in golf can seem particularly overwhelming, especially if a golfer isn’t familiar with some of the terms or why specific stats are tracked. 18Birdies will help you easily record your stats, analyze your game, and shoot lower scores, just like with the best caddies on tour.
Why Stats Matter: Working Towards Improvement
In golf, stats aren't just numbers; they can be your key to understanding where you need to improve.
Understanding your fairway hit percentage, reading your overall putts, and measuring your greens in regulation is not just about data; it's about analyzing / understanding your strengths / weaknesses and planning your practice to improve. 18Birdies makes this process easier by not just offering to help record your stats; it can be your personalized golf coach, helping you analyze the nuances in the numbers that can help transform your game.
FAQs: Deciphering Golf Stats
What Golf Stats Should Beginners Track? (GIR, FH, and Putts)
The main stats that new golfers should be tracking are:
- Green In Regulations
- Fairway Hits
- Putts
- Chips
- Greenside Sand Shots
- Penalties
GIR (Green in Regulation)
If you land on the green in 2 or fewer strokes under par. (1 on a par 3, 2 on a par 4, or 3 on a par 5)
FH (Fairway Hit)
Did the ball land in the fairway off the tee?
Putts
The number of putts.
Chips
How many shots on the hole were chips?
Greenside Sand Shots
How many shots on the hole were from a greenside bunker?
Penalties
How many penalty strokes occurred on the hole?
The above stats are the foundation of golf stats that can help guide your understanding of your performance and more importantly, where you can improve.
How to Track Greens in Regulation, Fairways Hit, Putts, Greenside Sand Shots, and Penalties?
After entering your score on the 18Birdies app, continue filling out the stats for each hole!
When you’re finished, you will be able to review the entire round, see your strengths/weaknesses, and understand what needs to be improved.
How Do Fairways Hit Impact My Golf Game?
Fairways Hit isn't just a number; it's a measure of your accuracy off the tee. If you’re finding that you’ve been missing the fairways on a large percentage of holes, you may be making your next shot a lot harder than it has to be. Hitting from the short grass is always easier than the rough. Even if it’s a bit shorter off the tee, hit more fairways, and you'll find yourself with an easier approach.
Why is Tracking Putting Stats Important for Beginners?
One of the potential areas in which beginners can start dropping strokes is with putting. By keeping track of your putts on every hole, you should be able to tell quickly if you could drop some strokes by working on your putting.
Using 18Birdies, analyze your putting performance, and hone the skill that sets champions apart.
Why is Tracking Chipping Stats Important for Beginners?
An easy way to see if you need to improve your chipping is to record and analyze your chips per hole.
If there are too many holes on the scorecard with multiple chips, this could indicate that the golfer needs some chipping practice.
Why is Tracking Greenside Bunker Stats Important for Beginners?
An indicator that a golfer needs to spend some time in the bunker is if they have too many holes that took multiple shots to get out of the bunker.
If you have too many holes with multiple greenside bunker shots, this can be an easy target to practice getting out in 1 stroke.
Why is Tracking Penalties Important for Beginners?
Tracking penalties can indicate that there may be some room for improvement with club selection, course management or even some swing improvements.
Should I Focus on Greens in Regulation as a Beginner?
Greens in Regulation isn't just a stat for pros. It's crucial for beginners too, to measure your approach accuracy.
It's intertwined with putts per hole and up-and-downs – metrics that can easily show where what part of your game needs improvement. 18Birdies ensures you're on the right path, every step of the way.
How Does Golf Handicap Work for Beginners?
The handicap index is an overall measure of how a golfer scores but with that being said, doesn’t provide any additional information about a golfer's game. Individual golfers with the same Handicap Index can be very different putters, chippers, or on the tee box.
While the Handicap Index gives an indicator of what a golfer is going to likely score on a given day, the stats will show how the golfer arrives at that score as well as be able to measure their specific strengths and weaknesses.
Utilizing 18Birdies for Success
Golf is an endlessly complicated game with a lot of stats to keep track of. And that’s without asking to maintain and analyze historical data to measure against your current stats. When you address your weaknesses in a specific stat category, there may be some down-the-fairway improvements as well. If you’re hitting more fairways, you may find yourself in a better spot on your second shot and hitting more Greens in Regulation as well, which will lead to fewer overall chips.
This is why it’s essential to continue to keep track of your scores and stats. When starting, it can be a big ask to keep track of all of the additional stats along with your scoring information.
18Birdies makes keeping track of stats and your rounds easier than ever. Download 18Birdies and start improving your game today!
