Every time you play a round of golf you keep track of your score, don’t you?  Even if it’s only to work out who’s winning the money.

But if you want to improve your game, logging the scores won’t help you.  You need information.  You need meaningful data.  You need to know how, not how many.

The strengths and weaknesses in your game will not be the same as anyone else’s.  That’s why counting scores won’t help.  Just think how many ways there are to make par... the perfect drive, the sweet long iron to the heart of the green, the putt that hangs on the edge and then the final tap in... or, a topped driver, sliced mid iron, hacked wedge and a dodgy chip stopped only by the flag getting in the way.  These are just two, you work out the rest. Which ever way you scored a four, how did you play? The score won’t tell you.

Knowing how many fairways you have hit today, or how many three putt greens ruined the card will not help either.  Think about it.  You’ve hit the fairway, there’s a thundering great oak tree between you and the green and you know that you should have been forty yards right of where you are.  Now how useful is it to know that you hit the fairway?  Those 3-putt greens that bug you every round may not be just the result of a poor putting technique.  How many times do you find yourself putting from just on the edge of the green perhaps fifty or sixty feet from the hole?  Even the pros sometimes take three on the long ones.  The problem really started with the previous shot.

It’s more important to know what your strengths and weaknesses actually are so that, when time permits, you can work on eliminating your weaknesses, and when the match is at a critical point you can play to your strengths.  You need to know how you are performing club by club, shot by shot.

The only way to improve your golf game is to think about what you want to do before you play the shot and then consider the outcome afterwards.  The jargon for this is ‘measuring achievement against target’ or ‘why doesn’t it go where I hit it?’

Keeping track of the differences between vanity and reality is the key to unlocking your game.  By simply recording shot by shot, the actual finishing position of the ball in relation to your preferred result, ie far left, left, right, far right, long, short, on target you build up a picture of how you perform with each club.

When most people go to their pro for a lesson and he asks ‘What’s your problem?’ they just shrug their shoulders and look all forlorn.  Whereas, when you go to your pro with your stats you will be able to tell him exactly what you are doing wrong, which saves him time and makes your lesson more cost effective.