This article is the first of two on using statistics to improve your game. This week we look at greens in regulation (GIR). Next week, we examine putting.

Among the best—and fastest—ways of cutting one's golf handicap is by improving your weaknesses. We all love to hit long, straight drives, but if driving isn't really a weakness, hitting drives at the practice range over and over again won't do much to improve your game.

Determining your weaknesses is the first step to improving your game. Once you know the, you can work on eliminating them, which could include taking golf lessons from a club pro, reading golf tips in magazines, or practicing on the practice green. And the best way of determining your weaknesses is by tracking your stats. If you're serious about becoming a scratch golfer, start with your stats.

The More You Know
Tracking your stats is a good way of determining your weaknesses. You might be better at some parts of the game than you think. And vice versa. You won't know unless you track your stats. You wouldn't buy a car without knowing a lot about it like how old it is, how many miles it gets per gallon, and how fast it goes. And if its pre-owned, you'd certainly want to know how many miles it's been driven.

Obviously, the more you know about your game the better off you are. But you can't rack every stat in the book, either. That would take the fun out of the game. So you need to know just what stats to track. Tracking your stats can also be time-consuming and cumbersome, so you need a method of tracking them that's fast and easy.

Tracking Greens in Regulations
Among the most important stats to keep is the number of greens hit in regulation (GIR). Often, GIR determines your score. The more greens you hit in regulation, the better your score. Hitting greens in regulation separates the players with high golf handicaps from those with low ones as well as the players who should take golf lessons from those who could give them.

An easy way of tracking GIR is to circle either the hole number or the hole score when you hit a green. Then at day's end all you have to do is add up the circles and you'll know exactly how many greens you hit. Keep track of this total after each round. Then after five, figure out the percentage. If you hit a lot of greens in regulation during a round, you're score will probably be in the 80s or lower.

Interpreting The Data
GIR tells you how well you play your irons. To get a read on your iron play, keep track of your GIF percentage on par 3s. This number represents how well you're doing under ideal conditions, that is, with a good lie and a clear shot. If you're not hitting the green on par 3s, chances are good you're not doing it from the fairways, where you don't always have good conditions.

Next, record every time you hit a green in regulation with an approach shot using an iron. Put a mark in an empty box on your scorecard. Then circle it if you hit the green in regulation with an iron. Count these marks up after each round, after five rounds, after 10 rounds, and so on. This will tell you just how good you are with your irons and whether you need to work on them.

Tracking Your Irons
Once you know your GIR with approach shots, the next question is are you hitting them with longer or shorter irons. To determine that, use the first nine holes on a separate scorecard and put a check mark next to the hole number that corresponds with the iron you hit into the green.

For example, if you hit an 8-iron into the green, put a check mark next to the 8 on the scorecard. If you hit the green, circle the mark. If you use a 5-iron, put a check next to the 5 on the scorecard and circle the mark if you hit the green with your shot. Afterwards, add up all your stats. You can tell from these how well you're doing with each iron.

In addition to counting GIR, you should count every time you hit a tee shot that fails to provide you with a position where you can hit a green in regulation. Mark those with an "X" over the hole. At the end of the round, add them all up. Then run this total over 10 or more rounds. That will tell you if your missing greens because of poor iron play or bad driving.

Of course, you may think this tracking system is too cumbersome. If so, feel free to devise your own system. What's important as far as improving your golf handicap is concerned is not how you track your GIR, but that you track of them. How you do it doesn't really matter. You're free to use a different system as long as it tracks accurately. Using these numbers, you can then determine where your weakness lies and which parts of the game to work on.

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book "How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros." He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Golf Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.