It's the end of the season, now what?

As I am writing this, I am watching the greenskeeper preparing for the winter months ahead. The golfers have stopped playing and there is less and less light during the day. So that begs the question, "What do you do at the end of the season?" Now is the time to take an honest look at the state of your game and decide how/what you want to do to improve it. Hopefully, if you have read my blog posts in the past, you will know that I am a fan of recording stats throughout the year. Let's look at my stats from Shot by Shot:

My handicap is 1 and is always being compared to handicap range +1-+3 of players who enter their information into Shot by Shot. You can see from the picture (above) that my best shots are bunker shots, which I find interesting because I love bunker shots and teaching bunker shots. No surprise there. My Tee to Green game and Short Game is closely compared to a 5hcp. Both of these areas need further investigation. Let's take a closer look at these stats. Below you can see that the solid green line is the # of greens that I hit and the solid pink line is the distance (in feet) from the hole after hitting the GIR. My average GIR is 8.9 which is about 3 greens away from my goal. I am happy with the average distance from each hole and I am aware that with more GIR, the average distance will likely go up. So if I have approximately 9 GIR that are average of 17 feet from the hole, why am I so much over par? Let's take a closer look at my putting below.

Improvement area #1 is Putting. During 2011, my putting closely resembles that of a 12-handicap player. There could be lots of reasons why, not the least of which is lack of practice time, but let's look a little closer at my putting stats: A couple of areas *POP* out at me. First, I need to improve the quality of my three-footers. 79% doesn't cut it. That number needs to be around 95%. To improve I will focus on (1) Square face to the hole (2) Square path of the putter head (3) Proper speed to reduce lip outs. Second, I NEVER make anything 16-20 feet. This is alarming since my average distance to the hole is 17 feet. To improve I will focus on (1) Knowing my speed (2) Starting the ball on the proper line. Third, I have 3-putted 100% of the time from 30-40 feet and 51-99 feet. Improvements here are speed control.

So, I am at the end of the season and see that my putting needs desperate attention during 2012. I need to improve my putting technique during the winter. I need to take this information to my coach and create a plan that I can do just a couple of minutes each day! If you are curious about how you can improve, feel free to contact me! Thanks for reading.

Regards,
Steven