I am pretty certain if I said to most golfers whether you be a professional or a recreational golfer that for the sake of a few minutes after every round and practice session I could improve not just the quality of your practice but the quality of your scoring too, most would say where do I sign up.
The old adage of practice smarter not harder is only relevant if you are measuring where the smarter should be. As Richard Woodhouse said, golf is one of the most poorly practiced sports on the planet, we don’t practice on the field of play and most people don’t practice in a way that reflects the way the game is played. Consider your last trip to the range, how many of you warmed up with a few wedges and then proceeded to hit the same club to the same target raking ball after ball onto the mat? When was the last time you played golf that way?
You may have also heard people saying that they collect stats and use that to analyse their game and they then proceed to tell you how many putts they had or how many greens they hit. Whilst this is better than nothing it doesn’t tell the whole story. You could have had 20 putts in a round of golf which would lead you to believe you are a great putter but if you missed 17 greens and chipped it close then in reality your putting was at the level you would expect and wasn’t outstanding at all. This is where strokes gained is the most useful metric but that can seem complicated and difficult to track.
I have been using the app Draw More Circles for a while now as a player and as a coach and I have been blown away with the insights it gives me. It literally takes me less than 10 minutes after every round to upload the data and I also use it for tracking practice. If I don’t know how my students are performing against their benchmark then I can’t personalise their training and practice routines. I get you to upload 5 rounds and then we can work out your benchmarks and the gaps in performance relative to your goals. The app will clearly show you your biggest strengths and biggest opportunities for improvement.
You will then be able to log in and see your practice goals which are set 10 percent harder than the benchmark needs to be, you then record performance against those and I can view directly on the app for all my students. This takes my coaching offer to a new level and means that everything is personalised and I get to see how you perform in the “real world” as oppose to the sterile environment of the range. It also means we can work together to build practice routines that will give you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of improvements. Why spend hours smashing 7 irons to a 150 target if your approach play from that distance is statistically not weak and we can get more improvements by focussing on 100 yards and in. The important bit about using data to drive this is that we aren’t guessing, we are using science and statistics to truly target and drive performance.
I would encourage anyone who plays the game to keep stats – and encourage and talk to your coach about using them too. Golf is a hard and frustrating game but by understanding where we truly need to improve we can hopefully make it more enjoyable and help you achieve the goals you want. I want all my students to be the best they can and achieve their goals and by working together through the coaching journey, and using Circles, we can benchmark, provide regular feedback and track progress. We can build better more effective practice habits and give you a plan so every time you are at the range or on the course you are making the most of your precious time.
When you understand your game you will be amazed at the improvements we can make.
