Statistics

Ranked by predictive power: the 10 golf stats that actually tell you what you will shoot, and the popular ones that tell you almost nothing.

Strokes gained has been around long enough to collect a set of misconceptions that survive because they sound reasonable. Here are seven of them, and what your own numbers say 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.