FIVE RULES OF LOWER SCORES

Mark Broadie literally wrote the book on golfing analytics. Every Shot Counts – which introduced Strokes Gained to the world – changed the landscape for which shots mattered most in golf, stopped us saying ‘drive for show, putt for dough’ and drawing Rory McIlroy to label the metric “the best stat that has come into our game for the last… well… ever”.

Here, Broadie explains why any golfer should care about their data, details why Strokes Gained is no longer just for Tour pros, and reveals the five most important areas the club golfer should target to make progress… as exposed by his painstaking data collection.

As the creator of the Strokes Gained metric now widely adopted by the world’s professional Tours, I guess I have become associated mostly with the pro game. But when I first became seriously interested in golf stats, way back in 2005, my fervent wish was to provide a data-based service for amateurs.

The conundrum here is that most club golfers don’t care about shot data. They want to go out and have fun, not crunch numbers. I get