What I’m Measuring on My Road to 85 | The Denver Driver
Score tells me what happened. These few measurements help me decide what to work on next—without turning a round of golf into a data-entry job.
I can look at a 94 and find several completely different stories. There were two birdies. There were good drives. There were also holes where one bad shot acquired friends. And there was a breakfast ball, which means the number needs an asterisk before it needs an explanation. That is why the Road to 85 cannot be a series of scores followed by my opinion about how unfair golf was that afternoon. The score matters. I want to shoot an honest 84 or better. But I also want each round to tell me what to do next. First, record the round honestly My starting record is simple: course, tees, total yardage, score and any departure from the normal rules. Practice rounds are welcome. Secret practice rounds, declared after the opening tee shot, are not. I am keeping the first-ball rule from the Road to 85 introduction. If I take a mulligan, I will say so. I can learn from that round without presenting it as an official milestone. Conditions deserve a brief note too. A windy afternoon from different tees is not a controlled laboratory comparison with last Tuesday. Then, find the holes that changed the day For my own review, I want to flag doubles or worse and ask what started them. Was the first problem a penalty? Poor contact? An ambitious target? Did I turn a manageable mistake into a second mistake because I wanted the first one back? These are different problems. They should not all receive the same prescription: hit more balls. A poor strike followed by a sensible recovery may need contact practice. A poor strike followed by a low-percentage escape may need a better decision. Sometimes it needs both. I also want to notice the boring successes: the recovery that put the ball back in play, the two-putt after a long first putt, the bogey that stayed a bogey. Those are part of the experiment. Use a few measures, with context Here is the small review card I propose using alongside the scorecard and Arccos—not a claim that I have already collected a complete season of these numbers. Penalty strokes: how many, and what decision or miss produced them? Doubles or worse: which holes, and where did the chain of mistakes begin? Three-putts: how many, and was the first putt unusually long or difficult? Repeated contact problem: the club, lie and shot I struggled with. One decision worth repeating: something that protected the round. One next experiment: a specific thing to test before or during the next round. I can mark a hole quickly and fill in the explanation afterward. The people behind me do not need to wait while I write a memoir beside the green. Arccos is evidence, not an argument-ending machine I use Arccos to help identify patterns, but the data still needs context. A short shot could be a mishit, a deliberate recovery or a recording error. Total putts alone cannot explain the difficulty of the putts I faced. Before making a practice decision, I need to check that the record reasonably describes the round. Then I can compare the numbers with what actually happened. One round can suggest a question. Repeated rounds can show whether that question deserves more attention. I do not want a single ugly afternoon to become permission to rebuild everything. Copy this after your next round Course / tees / yardage: Score / rules exceptions: The hole that cost me most: What started the problem: What I did next: The part of my game I should protect: My next experiment: How I will tell whether it helped: That last line is important. “Be more confident” is difficult to test. “Choose a recovery that gets me back into a normal position after trouble” gives me a decision I can actually review. What I am not measuring I am not collecting statistics simply because an app can display them. I am not trying to diagnose a swing from a scorecard. And I am not declaring improvement because one number briefly looks flattering. I want enough evidence to make the next useful decision. If breaking 100 is the immediate goal, start with why you do not need pars to break 100. The target is different, but the question is familiar: which avoidable mistakes are making the score bigger than it needs to be? Then use the card above. A useful round review should end with a next step, not just a verdict.
Home · Published articles
Enable JavaScript to use signup forms and interactive features.