Off TRAQ Podcast — Golf's Real Conversations
Sep 15, 2026 · 1 hr 39 min · 15 segments
Which golf stats actually help amateurs improve, and which ones are mostly noise? Charles and Roy go through **driving distance, fairways hit, putts per round, greens in regulation, double bogeys, and…
That said, going on to our main topic, I wanted to talk about statistics a little bit.
And we've touched on this a little bit here and there, but from a slightly different lens, which is, you know, we both being data people and being very well immersed in the data side of the world, I was thinking about every stat that we're tracking, right? And this is partially because we are soon releasing our own app, TrackPlay.
And as we've been working on it and looking at some of the scores and how do we, you know, kind of evaluate, I kind of came to the realization that a lot of the scores that we keep were more invented for professional play.
These are a lot of things that you'll see on television.
Um, but for the average amateur that's shooting in the nineties, let's call it like a lot of these stats kind of don't make sense, or at least nobody stopped and said, well, is this really a stat that we should care about? Um, or is this something that's just, you know, it makes for a good television statistics, but not something that is materially going to help our players or, or our average golfers, uh, be able to progress.
So I thought we'd go through some of these stats today.
I have six of them.
And then what I want to hear from you is, would you keep the stat? Would you kill the stat or would you replace it? And if you do replace it,
what would you replace it with? Okay, but before we get into that, so I'm assuming this is for the golfers that do keep stats because there are also a lot of golfers who, you know, they keep their scorecards and they kind of keep a mental note.
But you really do need some sort of app or some sort of device, right? Like I'm thinking like Arcos, Garmin has their own attachments.
So you're really thinking about like those users, right? Those amateurs.
Yeah.
Yeah, the players that keep the apps, obviously, most of these apps do this for them, right? So they'll show, like, I used Golf Shot for the longest time, you know, years and years and years ago.
And what was really interesting, you know, it would show my trends.
Like, am I getting better? What is my miss? Like...
My drives, the left, right, center, like what is their percentage mix? And, you know, it was really interesting because a lot of times they'd be like, I felt like I had a slice.
But if you look at the stats, I was actually like 30 something percent left hit and right.
Right.
So it's like it's actually, you know, not that it's definitely for those guys.
I would say if they keep paper stats like in a journal, I don't know anybody who does that, nor me.
would I understand why you would choose to do that? But like, sure.
If you, if you're keeping it manually on a piece of paper, then yeah, I guess this applies
to them too.
Yeah.
You know, what's surprising is I once played, this is already, I think like five, six years ago, but I played with someone who kept, had, had his own little flip book, And he would keep his stats there.
That said, going on to our main topic, I wanted to talk about statistics a little bit.
And we've touched on this a little bit here and there, but from a slightly different lens, which is, you know, we both being data people and being very well immersed in the data side of the world, I was thinking about every stat that we're tracking, right? And this is partially because we are soon releasing our own app, TrackPlay.
And as we've been working on it and looking at some of the scores and how do we, you know, kind of evaluate, I kind of came to the realization that a lot of the scores that we keep were more invented for professional play.
These are a lot of things that you'll see on television.
Um, but for the average amateur that's shooting in the nineties, let's call it like a lot of these stats kind of don't make sense, or at least nobody stopped and said, well, is this really a stat that we should care about? Um, or is this something that's just, you know, it makes for a good television statistics, but not something that is materially going to help our players or, or our average golfers, uh, be able to progress.
So I thought we'd go through some of these stats today.
I have six of them.
And then what I want to hear from you is, would you keep the stat? Would you kill the stat or would you replace it? And if you do replace it,
what would you replace it with? Okay, but before we get into that, so I'm assuming this is for the golfers that do keep stats because there are also a lot of golfers who, you know, they keep their scorecards and they kind of keep a mental note.
But you really do need some sort of app or some sort of device, right? Like I'm thinking like Arcos, Garmin has their own attachments.
So you're really thinking about like those users, right? Those amateurs.
Yeah.
Yeah, the players that keep the apps, obviously, most of these apps do this for them, right? So they'll show, like, I used Golf Shot for the longest time, you know, years and years and years ago.
And what was really interesting, you know, it would show my trends.
Like, am I getting better? What is my miss? Like...
My drives, the left, right, center, like what is their percentage mix? And, you know, it was really interesting because a lot of times they'd be like, I felt like I had a slice.
But if you look at the stats, I was actually like 30 something percent left hit and right.
Right.
So it's like it's actually, you know, not that it's definitely for those guys.
I would say if they keep paper stats like in a journal, I don't know anybody who does that, nor me.
would I understand why you would choose to do that? But like, sure.
If you, if you're keeping it manually on a piece of paper, then yeah, I guess this applies
to them too.
Yeah.
You know, what's surprising is I once played, this is already, I think like five, six years ago, but I played with someone who kept, had, had his own little flip book, And he would keep his stats there.
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