It’s easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to golf statistics. Anova Golf, for example, calculates over 700 different statistical variables, and it’s impossible to pay attention to all of them at once. So what golf statistics to keep?

What golf statistics to keep:

What golf statistics to keep if you have access to a platform

If you have access to a golf statistics platform, then we would suggest to keep the following stats in particular:

  • SG Total
  • SG Approach from 125-175 yards
  • SG Around from 10-20 yards
  • SG Putting from 5-15 feet
  • SG Putting from 25+ feet

Only SG variables, you might wonder? What happened to GIRs, Fairways hit, total putts and any of the other traditional golf stats we are used to seeing?

The reason is that the strokes gained methodology captures nuances of the game that are otherwise incredibly difficult to see. These variables include tee shots, approach shots, short game shots and putting – all in areas in which the difference between the better players and worse players is big – which means a big opportunity for you to beat your opponents. These are the skills where you can really show off how good you are, and since they all happen a lot, then you also have big leverage – a small increase in skill leads to a big improvement in performance. after first looking at these 5 stats, then we can use traditional golf stats as secondary variables in order to find more clues to explain a particular performance.

What golf statistics to keep if you don’t have access to a platform

If you don’t have access to a statistics platform, then it’s still possible to use the strokes gained methodology to your advantage. You can create an excel spreadsheet or use a strokes gained calculator online. However, those options are quite time consuming. Traditional golf stats are easy to collect and to measure, but they are quite difficult to know exactly what they mean. For example: is 32 putts good or bad? It’s impossible to tell since we don’t know anything about the distance the putts were hit from. Other traditional stats are similar in their binary characteristics. if you had to choose, then we would suggest the following:

  • GIR
  • Fairways hit
  • Driving distance
  • Scrambling
  • Putting average

While these traditional golf statistics leave quite a bit to be desired, they are still better than nothing, and you will be much better off using them than using no stats at all.

More about Anova.Golf’s golf statistics software, click here. 
More about Strokes Gained, click here.
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