Putting Stats Thoughts

It was a nice day to play.  The temperature was down 18 degrees from the weekend.  The only sour point was that I left all of my hats at home and bought one for the ears and eyes.

I'm now the owner of a Greg Norman Shark straw hat.  It is the only wide brimmed hat in the pro shop.  It worked ok.  Kept the sun out of my eyes and off my ears and didn't give me a headache.  It was fairly cool too with many vents in the crown.

I played pretty well today (this was Monday the 4th of June) with the exception of a few drives.  Not sure what the score was, but if I can't remember, it probably was pretty good.

I was thinking of putting stats and how one would measure putting performance.

Number of putts is dependent on number of greens hit and if the green is missed, then more a metric of chipping and sand play than putting.

I was considering the length of putts holed.  The cases are long putts that drop versus two or three putts.  If one is putting well and hitting greens, the length of holed putts (LoHP), might be pretty small.

Putts per GIR is a thought.  But more likely to measure proximity to the hole with approach shots and then the ability to putt well.

Thus, I am at a bit of a loss as to how to look at this.  Maybe it doesn't matter much.  Might just be a means to talk myself into a new putter!

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It's now Friday and I've kicked this topic around.  I don't think there is a good way to describe putting with a single number.

I'm leaning towards classifying putts as either basically makeable or not.   For the ordinary and prudent recreational golfer, I think that 4 feet might be outside length of a putt that you should expect to make.  Beyond that your goal probably ought to be to two putt.  Then we can summarize a round of putting as a percentage of what we should have made and did make versus total opportunities. 


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There was a article in the Atlantic magazine a number of years ago.  It was written by a coach on the college level who had coached both men and women's teams.  The differences were startling.  The gals didn't like the idea of a meritocracy as to who would play where.  They also tended to blame themselves for failures.

The guys blamed failure on their equipment.