Putting - Lesson 4

Setting Goals and Tracking Progress

This lesson will:

Record key putting statistics from each round and review your progress

Now that you’ve made the effort and put in the time to improve your putting, you’ll want to start seeing proof of the results. After all, that’s what you’re after right?

There are two important putting statistics that most professional golfers are concerned with: putts per round and putts per green in regulation.

Putts per round – The total number of times you used your putter while on the putting surface in a given round (do not count the number of times you putt from the fringe.) It should be pretty obvious why this stat is important in measuring your improvement as a putter.

Putts per GIR – Putts per green in regulation is the average number of putts per green you hit in regulation. In other words, on the holes that you were putting for birdie or eagle while on the putting surface, what was the average number of strokes you took to finish out (assuming of course you didn’t putt it off the green at some point). With our system, you enter the number of greens you hit in regulation and the total number of putts for those holes and we calculate your average for you. This statistic is also necessary to see your real improvement as a putter because it indirectly incorporates the difficulty of putts you faced into the equation. Putts per round can be misleading because someone who faces 30 foot putts all day will always take more total putts than someone who faces 1 foot putts all day, even though the first player may be a much better putter. Putts per GIR essentially throws out those holes where a player misses the green in regulation by a small amount and then has a simple shot onto the green (consequently ending up one-putting from a short distance).

The following steps will allow you to start tracking your key putting statistics with the AspiringGolfer My Goals system.

Once you've started entering rounds, you'll see your averages on the My Performance Goals Home page. If you'd like to see your averages for a different number of rounds than you originally chose, you can easily change the number of rounds included in the calculation on the Configure Goals page.

Set putting statistic goals for yourself

One of the unique aspects of the Aspiring Golfer system is that it doesn’t just give you historical numbers to look at. It provides you a tool to set goals for yourself. Recording statistics for your game, by itself, does not help you to improve. What does help you to improve is understanding what the statistics mean, setting target goals for yourself, and then sticking to a plan to get you there. You need to make a commitment to yourself, in writing, with specific target values and dates if you expect to give yourself the best chance of success.

If you’re not a golfer who has previously tracked putting statistics, you may not really know what your goals should be. In that case, before setting goals for yourself, you should play several rounds (at least 4 or 5) and enter those statistics into the system to get an idea of where you currently are. From there, pick realistic targets to shoot for, keeping the time period to roughly 10 to 20 rounds of golf. For example, if you play golf once a week, you would want to set your goal date for roughly 3 to 6 months. This timeframe is ideal because it allows you enough time to get an accurate measurement and to improve, but it is short enough that you are still motivated with a sense of urgency and your goals are for incremental improvement. Feeling like you are a long ways from your goals can be a disheartening thing. Also, in terms of deciding how much improvement is realistic, consider the following.

To set putting statistic goals for yourself using the My Goals system:

Continue to practice your putting diligently and enter your statistics for every round you play. Make yourself achieve the goals you have set for yourself by reviewing your Goals every day.