The whole concept of keeping stats is to have some concrete data for you to evaluate your rounds to find your strengths and weaknesses. Once you know what you are good at you work to keep that good. But the key to getting better and lowering your scores is to truly know where you game is lacking and work hard on those areas. Bill, a devout statistician, asks a great question, looking to find some perspective from his numbers.
Bill McCabe says:
Happy New Year to All'¦.
Every time the Stats discussion shows up on this blog I read it with great interest.
I've posted several times with the same question. Here goes again?
I have been keeping stats for years. As a matter of fact, I'm looking at my books from 2007, 2008 and 2009 on my desk as we speak. But what they tell me means little if I can't put the data in perspective. What do I compare my results TO?
Does anyone know where I can go to learn what's good and not good? If you can't COMPARE your results to anything how do you know if you need work or not?
For example, over the past few years I've hit 72% of fairways with a R/L miss rate .53 / .47, that tells me I hit it pretty straight. I got up and down just over one in three attempts. I three-putted just under once per 18 holes.
My instincts of over 50 years of playing suggest that stats like those are pretty good (I play to +/- 3.0, but how do I know? Can anyone point me somewhere to find comparative stats?
Thanks for listening (again)
Bill
The Surge says:
Your instincts of 50 years of playing golf that tells you that your stats are pretty good, is correct. Being a +/-3 handicap, they are in line with one exception, your up and down rate is way too low.
I must congratulate you as you have some really good stats, especially your fairways hit at 72%. I also like that you keep and know your right and left miss rate. I think that is an important extra piece of info that should be kept for all shots to see if a new pattern starts, which can give a clue to alignment or swing issues.
I would say there are two basic ways to compare stats. One is to compare against golfers of your relative same handicap range. The other is to compare against the best, the PGA Tour.
Comparing against your peers is perhaps the most revealing in terms of where you are relative to, as in your case, other 3 handicaps. It is good to know where you fare against them and what is good and what is weak. Plus, you can also look at those handicaps lower than yours so you have a good road map as to where and what you have to improve to go lower.
PPGS.com has just put on line in the Inner Circle membership club a detailed stats program. It is continually being upgraded, adding more details to be able to have more categories to track if you want more details. You can take it all or just what you want. The members will, as you ask, have the ability to stand their stats up against their handicap peers, as well as check lower handicaps stats.
As for checking your stats against PGA Tour players you need to go to go to their website www.pgatour.com. On the home page, just to the right of the logo on the header line, the 7th heading to the right, is STATS. Click on stats and it takes you to the main stats page where you can choose any category which shows the top five in every category. If you want to see the entire list, which usually goes to around 250, just click on 'view all,' which is in the lower right corner.
Then, if you want to check out individual players stats a little deeper, on the header line is Players. Click on Players and an alphabetical list comes up. All you do is scroll down and choose the player whose stats you want to see. A chart appears, usually listing the player's last 4 or 5 years stats on the PGA or Nationwide Tour. Now, if you want serious details that may even give you an idea of some more categories you may want to start keeping, click on in the lower right corner of the chart MORE STATS. If you like , you are now in numbers heaven.
Just for comparison to the PGA Tour, the leader in driving accuracy for 2009 was Joe Durant who, in 60 rounds, hit 74.09 fairways. Your 72% would have you in 7th place (pretty strong) kicking Heath Slocum down to 8th as he was 71.99%. When you go into the deep individual stats, they have a stat called '3 putt avoidance' that you can check out.
Your up and down percentage is what they call scrambling. The leader was guess who? Tiger is #1 at 68.18 percent. Your 1 in 3 up and down rate of 33.3% is way too low for your handicap and for that matter anyone, as scrambling is about touch and feel and not strength and power. The 09 scrambling list went down to Gary Woodland ranked 184th at 45.08%. So Bill, I would recommend you need to get your shag bag out over to the chipping green and work on getting the ball closer to the hole. Your scores and handicap will start going down.
I hope this helps you and I bet when you check out the super stats page it will give you some ideas that will just make you have to add a few more categories.
The Surge!