
Golf Focus: How to Stay Focused Using Data
Telling yourself to concentrate harder rarely survives the back nine. Your shot data shows exactly where attention slips, and gives you something specific to hold onto instead.

Telling yourself to concentrate harder rarely survives the back nine. Your shot data shows exactly where attention slips, and gives you something specific to hold onto instead.

For most of its existence golf measured itself with one number per round. It took until 2003 for anyone to record where the ball actually went, and until the 2010s for that idea to reach club golfers.

The first card in the post-round deck is your scorecard, hole by hole, rendered to be read on a phone screen. Here is what it carries and when it beats posting the total.

The club you trust most is often not your best club, and the part of your game you apologize for is often fine. A simple self assessment against your strokes gained data shows where belief and performance have come apart.

A red strokes gained page is not a verdict. Here is how to work out whether your numbers are showing a genuine problem, a rough patch, or a data issue you can fix in five minutes.

Everyone believes they play the first hole badly. Your hole-by-hole data can tell you whether that is true, how much it costs, and whether the problem is your nerves or your warm-up.