If you want to get your strokes gained you can easily track your shots on a regular scorecard, just like Mike Carroll shows us.
When we wrote about how to track a new round in Golfity, we said there are three ways to do it. You can decide to enter the total score, the score for each hole (what you normally write on your scorecard) or you can go shot by shot.
The last option is the best to get insights about your game, including strokes gained and many other metrics. But of course you have to enter more data, you need to enter the distance to the hole and lie for each shot.
Unless you have the memory of an elephant that allows you to write all the shots after your round, you should do it while you are playing. And you basically have two options: either you use your phone and track each shot on Golfity or you write it on your scorecard and later you enter the shots on Golfity.
If as me you don't like using your phone while you play, writing your shots in the scorecard is the best option. You can find online several templates to do it, or you could even create it yourself, but I don't find this very convenient. You have to remember to print the template and take it to the golf course, which at least for me does not always happen.
What you always have on the golf course is a regular scorecard, and it's very easy to use it for tracking your shots. I do it just the way Mike Carroll (the expert on fitness for golf, he has a really nice app you should try) showed us in this tweet.
You just need to use each row of the scorecard to enter the distance to the hole and lie. The first shot in each hole is easy, you have the distance written on the card (you could also correct it if the tee is in another position) and obviously the lie is the tee. For the following shots, you only need to write the distance and then some letters for the lie (F for fairway, R for rough, S for sand... whatever works for you).
For example, on the first hole Mike shot his second shot from 125 yards in the fairway. The third shot from 22 yards on the sand, and then a putt from 18 feet and another from 3 feet for a total of five shots.
If you also want to track the clubs you use you could use the same square to write distance, lie and a the club.
For me the advantages of this system are that I don't have to carry my phone while I play and also that this forces me to go over my round when I finish and enter it on Golfity, which I find is a very good exercise.
How do you track your shots? Do you use the app on the course? On the scorecard? Any other method?
"If you’re serious about getting to scratch, you should be using strokes gained analysis". That's what Sean Denning concludes in his blog, Par Machine.
Data Golf is one of the best sites for fans of golf analytics.
You can see your strokes gained by category for each hole in the new scorecard stats we have at Golfity.
We calculate your strokes gained for each shot in a hole, to help you better understand this new metric
If you want to lower your scores reducing the number of awful shots should be one of your key priorities.
