Golf Tips: Track Your Putting Stats

The next time you play golf, take a scorecard separate from your group or fellow players and use it to track something other than just score.  Keeping stats, even the most basic, can give you great insight into your golf game and what you can do to improve it.  The stats can also tell you what you do well. Start with putting Rather than overwhelming yourself with a million stats at first, start the most important single stat you can focus on: putting.  Putting can comprise from 40-60% of all strokes on the course.  Based on those numbers alone you can determine the best place to shave strokes off your score quickly, the greens. Most golfers write their score on a line of the scorecard, then put a small sub-number below right of that score to indicate putts. Something like this: ⁵₂. In the example above the score on the hole is a 5, and the number of putts on the hole is 2. At the end of a round, count your putts up and write the total down.  Total putts per round is a good stat to be aware of. Putts per hole Next, take the total putts number and divide it by the number of holes played which is usually 9 or 18 holes.  A decent golfer strives to 2-putt or better on every hole.  So if you have 36 putts or less for 18 holes, you're not doing too bad.  Think about this for a minute.  Par for 18 holes is usually 72, and it is expected for a good player to 2-putt every green.  18 holes times 2 putts = 36 strokes!  Therefore, putting could be as much as 50% of of a great score. For an idea of what really good putting is, the leading putter on on the PGA Tour this year in putts per round is Kevin Na, who averages 27.3 putts per round.  His low total putts for the hear is 22 in 18 holes.  Statistically dead last in putting this year on the tour is Ernie Els at 30.84.  The current #1 ranked player in the world, Luke Donald, comes in at 4th place in total putts per round at 27.88. Those numbers show you how fine of a line there is on tour and how important even a single putt per round can be. Conclusion Track your putts per round and try to focus on improving the numbers and your scores will start going down! Next week we'll talk more about some interesting putting stats and how you can further improve your scores.