Don’t overlook a learning opportunity from a bad round
Updated 5/19/18: A golfer using 80BREAKR™ emailed me asking what I thought the most important statistic was for the amateur to focus on to break 80. I looked through my blog posts, and the post was missing! I found a whole bunch of articles that did not get moved from my original blog before the 80BREAKR™ app was initially released. I’m going to start moving some of those old posts to this blog & update as necessary)
Today’s round was bad. The poor shots and lack of focus I’ve been working on seemed to all come flooding back today: shanky pitch shots, pull-hook on par 3’s, and poor driving. I was thinking “oh well, bad day today, I haven’t played in a couple weeks” But that is not going to help me. What is the take away? How can I use this to improve? I concluded months ago that greens in regulation is key. Most golfers can get around the course averaging 36 putts. Sometimes you’ll pitch it close and sometimes you’ll three-putt. Most golfers can pitch onto the green, then 2 putt. I don’t believe short-game is key. Important for scoring, but not the most important. If you hit every green in regulation, and proceeded to 3 putt every single hole, you would end up with a 90. You could 3-putt 10 holes, and end up with an 82.
Lucius Riccio, Ph.D. did an (extensive) analysis of golfers scores, and he came up with this formula I found in a Golf Digest article from May 2006:
golf score = 95-2*GIR
If you’re next to the 18th green in 6 shots like I was today, my great pitch and the 1 foot putt made a lovely snowman on my scorecard. Two lost balls off the tee today created 4 penalty strokes. GIR are the key to great scoring. Hitting the fairway, or at least keeping the ball in play off the tee, enables GIR. I can clean up my pitches and my lack of focus, but driving that enables GIR is the take-away from today’s bad round. You can see below, no drives in the fairway and no greens in regulation.
Before 80BREAKR™ was published, I used various online tools from wherever I could find them to help analyze my game. The image above was on USHandicap.
The 80BREAKR™ Mobile Scorecard App Showing the results recreated from 2014
80BREAKR™ also gives the amateur golfer all the stats & on-course shot making characterization you need to help focus your limited practice time.
Automatic Stats shown above using Game Improvement Mode
80BREAKR™ On-Course Shot Quality Results
So I decided to compare the big data used by Dr. Riccio to my analysis of my own 9 hole rounds at Torrey Pines. I want to understand how my game stacks up regarding how many GIR are necessary to break 80 for a regulation 18 hole golf course.
Perhaps my pitching was on this day, or VERY familiar with Torrey?
So Dr. Riccio predicts that ANY golfer can break 80 if they hit 8 GIR, but obviously that’s an average of thousands of golfers and 10’s of thousands of rounds of golf. My results indicate if I play the way I did for these particular rounds at Torrey Pines North on the back 9, I might break 80 with 6 GIR. If your putting is off one day or a radically different green speed than you’re used to, you might need 9 or 10 GIR. The interesting point to me, is that GIR is vital. That means you need to get into a position before you’re on the green to reach the green. To do that, you’ll need a decent drive (or great 2nd shot on a par 5) to get on the green in regulation. Finally, I’m going to keep the importance of GIR in mind before each shot.