Golf Analytics

Most golfers check their stats too often and change their practice too fast. The fix is not tracking less, it is matching what you look at to how much data you actually have.

Before 2003, nobody knew where tour players actually hit the ball. ShotLink turned every shot on the PGA Tour into a coordinate, and within a decade it had overturned most of the received wisdom about what separates good golfers from great ones.

You do not need a sports psychologist to spot your mental patterns. First-tee nerves, tentative putting, and post-disaster spirals all leave a signature in your shot data.

Golf advice tells you two opposite things about laying up: get as close as you can, and leave yourself a full wedge. Both are right, and the tracked data tells you which one applies to you.

Two golfers hit the same number of greens and take the same number of putts, yet one shoots seven strokes better. The gap usually lives in a stat almost nobody tracks: how far away the first putt was.

Almost every golfer believes they fall apart on the back nine. The hole-by-hole data says most of them are wrong, and the ones who are right usually have a specific, fixable cause.