What is best way to identify where to pick up strokes.

Currently a 6.5 hdcap. I really would like to start ramping this down a bit but feel like I am at a plateau. I think I could pick up a little in irons and putting but I don’t really know for sure.

What at is the best way to figure out where to focus practice. Just write down all the strokes, what club and what result. I know that there are tools like Arrcos but wasn’t sure if using something like the grint or some other analytical tool would be better.

Keep track of your stats. Find out your miss.

FW ... miss left or right?
GIR .... miss left, right, long, short
short game ... chunks, leave it short, etc.
sand play .... inconsistent?
Putting .... 3 putts?

Once you find out your typical miss, concentrate on that particular part of your game. Practice with a purpose.

If you are missing GIR and having to chip on and then 2 putt to make bogey that is costing strokes. If you are hitting GIR and 3 putting quite a bit then that is costing you quite a few strokes. Those are the first two things I would look at.

At that level of player, i would be focusing on course management into greens. Play middle of the green and let your putter clean it up. maybe look at your 125yds and in stats and see where your GIR is and your proximity to the hole distances are if you want to get that granular.

This is going to come across rude, and it really isn't my intention, but how do you not know where/what is costing you? Even when I was at an 11 I knew that I needed to be more accurate with my irons, and that my putting was atrocious. Now that those two spots are coming along, I'm trending down to a 6.

Now, I need to focus back to being more consistent off the tee because hitting 1 or 2 fairways in a round just isn't cutting it. Putting is better, but still needing of improvement.

All it has taken me is paying attention to my game and recounting my shots after the round to see where I could have done better. If I didn't get a par, I go back over that hole to see what cost me the most. From there I can put together trends and find what is lacking. I can usually recall a round, and certain shots, up to 2 or 3 days after.

The stats I track are: score, fairways, GIR, and putts. I don't get into the weeds of where I missed (e.g. short, long, left or right)

slimjim32 said:

The stats I track are: score, fairways, GIR, and putts. I don't get into the weeds of where I missed (e.g. short, long, left or right)

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I agree that tracking fairways-greens and putts can be useful, but noting whether shots (off the tee or into greens) are missed left or right is also significant.
By far the most common amateur miss is falling short of greens. Jack Nicklaus attributes this to amateurs clubbing themselves for a perfect-square strike with the iron, whereas he most often clubbed himself to expect a slight mishit.

Without knowing anything about your game, I can tell you it's short game and putting, a distant third is staying our of trouble off the tee. Turn three putts into two putts, turn a couple two putts into one putts, get up and down once or twice more in a round. That's 3-5 shots per round. Easy to practice as well. Just take a few balls to the putting green and work at it a bit. If nothing else in your game changes, if you improve the short game, the scores will go down.

I was in a similar sport several years ago. Instead of trying to make birdie on every hole, I look to make easy pars. The birdies will come from that.

Supersport said:

Currently a 6.5 hdcap. I really would like to start ramping this down a bit but feel like I am at a plateau. I think I could pick up a little in irons and putting but I don’t really know for sure.

What at is the best way to figure out where to focus practice. Just write down all the strokes, what club and what result. I know that there are tools like Arrcos but wasn’t sure if using something like the grint or some other analytical tool would be better.

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Do you have a scorecard you can post of a recent round? That might help us shed some light.


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It's an unpleasant fact but true even so. Unless you track situational stats in terms of distance and situation (fairway, rough, pitching out of trees, water hazards, bunkers, etc.) then you are just guessing about which elements of your game cost you the most strokes. Filling scorecards with checks and X's and little arrows for left and right, counting numbers of putts and all that is easier than tracking situational stats but those counting stats can not be compared in terms of significance to your score. Not worth bothering.

Something like Arccos or Game Golf will work, although their ways of doing Strokes Gained are a bit dodgy (especially Game Golf). You can use the app called Golfmetrics and just enter all your shots from memory after the round but unfortunately Broadie charges an extortionate subscription fee for a pretty basic app. Not sure what the landscape is like in terms of other apps with real analytics, most of the best ones also seem to charge a lot of money for a subscription.

Knowing that you took 33 putts and shot 84 today versus 29 putts and shot 82 last week tells you almost nothing about your putting. Or I should say it tells you no more about putting than you already knew just from having played the round. Putting is the most extreme example of the principle that applies to all golf stat-keeping. Distance matters and distance does NOT average out from hole to hole, round to round. Taking 30 putts after hitting 13 GIR with a median first-putt length of 25 feet is nothing at all like taking 30 putts after hitting 5 GIR with a median first-putt length of 10 feet. If you don't track the first-putt lengths for each hole then don't bother counting putts at all.

It's the same for "GIR Hit" as a stat. Being on the green in regulation but 50 feet from the hole isn't particularly better than missing the green by 5 yards in a good lie and being 30 feet from the hole. And hitting a green then being 50 feet from the hole on your second shot from 240 yards on a Par 5 is much better ball striking than hitting a green then being 50 feet from the hole on a 160-yard Par 3. Context matters. In golf, context is everything.

And please, please forget about "Fairways hit" as a counting stat. One yard off the fairway in the first cut is no worse than being five feet away and in the short grass. Being on the left edge of the fairway but having to hook your second shot around a tree is far worse than being a couple yards into the right rough but with a clear shot to the green.

If you are totally clueless about your own game (unlikely for anyone who plays enough golf to get down into single digits) then you can learn a little bit by tracking your left/right misses of fairways, left/right/short/long misses of greens, number of penalty strokes from tee and approach shots, number of 3-putts or number of missed putts inside 3 feet. Just a little. But those are such vague, general stats they're going to just confirm what you already knew. Maybe you miss left a lot because you hook your driver. Or you 3-putt a lot because you have poor distance control. There's nothing in that kind of stats to let you dive down and get real insights that you might not notice just from common sense and paying attention.

Then there's the real question that stats only halfway address. What are you going to do about it? If you miss tons of greens short because you seldom catch an iron shot cleanly, the "fix" for that might be to fundamentally improve the crummy iron swing you've had your whole life. Again, you already know your iron swing produces way too many mishits. Or if your up-and-down rate from simple situations within 30 yards of the green is poor, are you a terrible chipper? Or do you miss in places where you can be 10 yards off the green but Phil Mickelson would have trouble getting up and down?

The whole thing is like a trip down a rabbit hole. You don't know how long it might take or what you might find. But you can just count up a few simplistic stats and decide "30 putts is too too many", "need to average more than 9 GIR", "need to quit missing 5 fairways a round". All those things might be true but they don't tell you which among the 30 putts or the <9 GIR or the 5 missed fairways is the bigger problem. And they surely don't suggest any solution.

P.S. And unless you are a Tour player (probably not even then) absolutely forget about any stat that is denominated in "par saves". For even a low single-digit handicap, getting up and down from a bunker to "save bogey" is EXACTLY as valuable as getting up and down from a bunker to "save par". Or any other situation you care to name.

If you hit your tee shot OB, re-tee and have 150 into the green for your fourth shot then knocking it close to the hole and making bogey is EXACTLY as important as it would have been to hit a second shot from 150 close to the hole and make birdie. If you see any software or record-keeping suggestion to keep track of how often you save par, that is not serious analysis. It's ego-service.

What is best way to identify where to pick up strokes.

StLCardsFan said:

Without knowing anything about your game, I can tell you it's short game and putting, a distant third is staying our of trouble off the tee. Turn three putts into two putts, turn a couple two putts into one putts, get up and down once or twice more in a round. That's 3-5 shots per round. Easy to practice as well. Just take a few balls to the putting green and work at it a bit. If nothing else in your game changes, if you improve the short game, the scores will go down.

I was in a similar sport several years ago. Instead of trying to make birdie on every hole, I look to make easy pars. The birdies will come from that.

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Mark Broadie is the guy who devised the “strokes gained” concept that the PGA TOUR uses. If you read his book “Every Shot Counts”, he will tell you that what you wrote above is not true for most amateurs. Tee shots and long approach shots are the #1 area that amateurs need to improve upon, because they are the shots that most amateurs struggle with.....and will result in the most strokes gained if you can improve upon them. The difference between “shots taken” by an amateur compared to a low handicapper from 50 yards and in (including putting) is much narrower, than from 150 yards and out. This makes sense, because there is nothing inherently difficult about hitting a putt or a short pitch.

DG_1234 said:

I agree that tracking fairways-greens and putts can be useful, but noting whether shots (off the tee or into greens) are missed left or right is also significant.
By far the most common amateur miss is falling short of greens. Jack Nicklaus attributes this to amateurs clubbing themselves for a perfect-square strike with the iron, whereas he most often clubbed himself to expect a slight mishit.

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True. I wasn’t saying that it wasn’t, just that when I track my stats I don’t go that in depth. I save that for after the round when I go back over holes and try to figure out what was good and what was bad.

I’m a big proponent of knowing your strengths, weaknesses and usual miss, but I am just as big a proponent of not letting yourself get so immersed in those details DURING the round. I would go stir crazy trying to figure all that stuff out while playing that it would distract me from actually playing the game.

I'd recommend Arccos if you are into technology. It will track what you need to track and find patterns. You can also do it the old fashion way and keep your stats on course and then journal after the round. This will allow the through-lines to be drawn.

Also, if you duff a 180-yard approach shot from the fairway you might end up with a lost ball or in a water hazard. Or duff it really bad and you end up with a 160-yard next shot from the rough. It can *easily* cost you one full stroke or more. Sometimes even a slight mishit will cost you a stroke on a long approach shot.

Conversely, it takes a serious disaster to hit a 20-yard chip from the fringe or a 40-foot putt so badly that it costs you more than a slightly harder next shot than you'd have after a good chip or putt. Plus, as you say, it takes no great athletic ability or talent to at least make a decent pass at a chip from the fringe.

That tired conventional wisdom about "short game, short game, short game" being all that a weekend golfer ought to work on is based on a willful ignoring of the actual situations that arise in a round of golf and the context in which they combined to create your final score on a hole.

Anyone who watched me play a round of golf last weekend would say (unless they were too polite) that my short game can charitably be described by a word that rhymes with "ducks". Even the basic stuff I do inconsistently and the tricky stuff I can hardly do at all. Yet over time my Strokes Gained stats show that I lose far more strokes from tee to green than I do with my awful short game.

slimjim32 said:

True. I wasn’t saying that it wasn’t, just that when I track my stats I don’t go that in depth. I save that for after the round when I go back over holes and try to figure out what was good and what was bad.

I’m a big proponent of knowing your strengths, weaknesses and usual miss, but I am just as big a proponent of not letting yourself get so immersed in those details DURING the round. I would go stir crazy trying to figure all that stuff out while playing that it would distract me from actually playing the game.

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I hear what you're saying, but know that a major part of shooting par golf is that the player is aware of what he/she has on any given day. For example, a typical Tour player will have awareness during his warm up and first few shots of the round whether his swing tendency that day is missing left or right, carrying shots longer or shorter than usual etc... Throughout the round he/she uses this awareness to select clubs and choose lines of play.

After the obvious stuff - Course management, FIRs, GIRs, Putts, 2+ chips/pitches on a hole, and penalties - all that's really left is proximity to the hole.

Addressing proximity to the hole could be choice of tees, but most likely it's going to require improved ball striking.

-CRW- said:

Addressing proximity to the hole could be choice of tees, but most likely it's going to require improved ball striking.

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Or playing from the fairway instead of rough.

I wish I had your game, but I always live by the motto your have to know your weaknesses to improve on them.

I think keeping track of your stats will give you ideas of where your shots are missing to get to that next level. By sheer guess, I wouldn’t be surprised it’s in your scrambling from bad shots to the green and around the green. If you knew your putting needed work you would know. If your driving or irons needed work, you probably would also already know. So, I am guessing it’s scrambling since that happens differently each round. Could be a few bad drives or irons or around the green areas, but since it’s different each time it’s tough to know.


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Et Tu Brute? said:

Or playing from the fairway instead of rough.

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Which comes from...improved ball striking.

Well, yes if any of us improved our ball striking it would improve our proximity to the hole and our scores. He gets that advice for free.

I think he was searching for ways to determine something non-obvious.

I mean, if he improves his ball striking his handicap will go down. If he improves his putting his handicap will go down. If he improves his course management or his short game or his driving distance...wait for it...his handicap will go down. What he'd like is to know how to go about figuring out which of these to start with.

Threads like this always elicit two automatic answers. The guys who answer "short game, short game, short game" and the ones who say "you've got to hit it closer to the hole". That's like saying the key to getting rich is to buy lots of shares of stocks that will double in price next year.

That’s just it. There is no secret. So all we can do is list the obvious and then the not so obvious - such as proximity to the hole.

Being “advanced” is just being good at doing the basics.

Another vote for Arccos. Minor tweaking after the round and it tracks your stats.

After two Beers at the 19th Hole.

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I'm going to say short game, always. I saw Martin Kaymer practicing simple chip shots for hours at Whisper Rock during the time he was ranked #1 in the world. He was using balls that were 1/2 black and 1/2 white; I can only assume he was making sure his chips had no side spin.

At any rate, improvement from 100-yards and in , plus improvement putting, would help save strokes over any other area IMO.

Martin Kaymer had the chipping yips during the time he was ranked #1 and won the US Open at Pinehurst. Don' t you recall him using putter from 30 yards off the green, even if he had to putt through short rough?

Kaymer is not exactly an argument in favor of chipping being the most skill for scoring. He rather proves the opposite, in my opinion.

I’ve written about this elsewhere. If you really want to analyze your game, write down the distance of every shot you try. This will give you your proximity on every shot, and you can see what you average on various shots. I think a 10% proximity is a good standard (pros are around 8%). Drives aren’t gauged exactly the same way, since you aren’t going for the hole, but you do want to eat up as much of the course as possible with your tee shots.

Instead of keeping score for other people, use all the spaces to write, for each hole,
1. what club you teed off with
2. The length of your approach
3. The length of your pitch if you missed the green
4. The length of each putt
5. Your score

So let’s say you have a 400 yard par 4. You hit your drive 250, leaving a 150 yard shot. You hit that shot to just off the green, 13 yards away. You pitch it up to 4 feet, and make the putt...

On your card, for that hole, write
D
150
13
4
4

D means driver
150. Yards for approach
13. Yards for pitch
4. Feet for putt
4. Your score

Divide each shot result by its target distance to get your proximity %. How good was the pitch? 4 feet is 1.3 yards. 1.3 yards divided by 13 is 10%. You could also do this by feet... 4/39=~10%. How good was the approach? 13/150=8.6%, very good.

On your par 5s, write your tee shot and your fairway shot in the first square separated with a /.

On par 3s write your tee shot in the approach square.

Here’s my card below from tonight. You can see what I do. At the end of the 9, you mark how many fairways, gir, and scrambles you made out of however many attempts you had. I also write my # of putts and add up my feet of putts made.

I rangefinder every approach and pitch, and pace off every putt, as part of my preshot routine anyway, so it doesn’t actually take up any time during play. Off the green stuff is written in yards, putts are written in feet.


So my approach proximity for each hole was 13.3%, 12.3, 10.4, 9.9, 5.4, 37, 6.3, 3.1, 9.5. For an 11.9% average. The worst is the 37, but it was a pitch, as I hit my 3w over the green and was left short sided on a steep downhill shot. Oh well. Best shot was my tee shot on par 3 #17. Hit 5/7 fairways, 7/9 greens, went 2/2 on scrambling, putting was meh but I only missed one putt inside 6 feet so that’s okay I guess.

Anyway doing it like this you can see what the bad shots are, and identify weak areas as well as strengths.


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