A little knowledge is a useful thing

So OK, it’s a game whereby the guy that gets the ball in the hole in fewer shots than the other guys wins, but as the now legendary short game master Dave Pelz puts it, it’s more a matter of statistics.

Pelz has become cemented in the minds of golfers worldwide for his contribution to the remarkable rise in fortunes of Phil Mickelson – that is of course, more so in recent years.

Mickelson, already a class player and in the top five in the world rankings when they were first acquainted, went on to win his first major of his career due to the timely intervention of Pelz.

Like any good business model the answers for Phil were in measuring key performance indicators (KPI) and in not taking unnecessary risks. Now I appreciate that us mere mortals cannot boast the feathery and magical touch of the US star, but we can all set about a process of analysing our games by creating our own KPIs and managing our practice around the results.

The number of amateur golfers that actually analyse their results from a round of golf I can only guess is extremely low. To begin with, let’s look at one of the key areas of your game for analysis purposes, such as sand saves (greenside).

What if you knew the following information over an average of the last five rounds you played:

• Total successful and unsuccessful ups and downs
• What percentage of successful and unsuccessful attempts were from a flat, downhill, plugged or uphill lie
• What was the average distance of shot for successful and unsuccessful attempts
• Percentage of attempts that finished long, short or perfect distance in relation to the pin
• Number of thin, heavy or perfectly struck shots

Now these are only a few of the key performance indicators you could look at in your own game, but imagine how useful this information would be.

Good business practice

Golf is made up of many games within a game, in many ways similar to the way corporations are made up of many different businesses. What would happen to these corporations or individual businesses if they failed to analyse and review key areas of their performance?
If they failed to measure these specific areas they would ultimately break down and in most cases they would fail in time – how is your game different to this? The answer is – it’s not.

The season is still young and it’s never too late to adopt good business practice. Take a leaf out of Phil’s book and start analysing your own game – you never know, that first monthly medal win may just be around the corner.