5 Reasons to Performance Track Your Golf in 2024 

Do you want to lower your handicap? Enjoy your golf by scoring better? Beat your friends and win the one thing money can’t buy: Bragging rights!  

If you answered yes to any of the above, you should give serious thought to tracking your on-course stats. 

“But it takes too much effort to go through the data.” (You might say to yourself.) 

Nah, man. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. With Shot Scope’s free (FYI, there’s no annual fee to track your stats with Shot Scope) mobile app and the website dashboard, you can identify the strengths and weakness in your game in minutes. 

What’s the benefit in that? 

Here are five reasons you should start to track your golf game. 

Reason No.1 – Learn about your game

Performance tracking knows more about you than you do. We all have a rough idea about which areas in our game cost us shots. But how many?  

 With tracking, you can pinpoint the exact aspects of your golf that are costing you on the course. With Shot Scope’s Strokes Gained and Handicap Benchmarking data, you will be able to see how you compare to players of a similar handicap as well as those at your handicap goal.  

No more guessing. With performance tracking, you know exactly what you need to do to take your game to the next level. 

Reason No.2 – Practice with purpose 

Yes, it is good fun to go to the driving range and hit bombs (Editor’s note: Why else would you go to the range?) but is this helping your game?  

Unlikely. (Ed: Dammit)  

Many of us have a finite amount of time we can dedicate to playing golf, let alone practicing, which is why performance tracking is so important.

Stat tracking provides insights that allow you to use your time efficiently and get the most out of your game and practice sessions by targeting your weaknesses. 

Shot Scope has several products like the X5 GPS watch that can track your game and provide this much-needed valuable insight. 

Reason No.3 – Goal setting 

Tracking your performance allows for realistic and specific goals to be set.  

Wanna play on Tour next year? Yeah, good luck with that. Again, we’re talking about realistic goals. 

Let’s say you want to drop your handicap from 12 to 8—a significant cut. With no statistical data, where do you start? Without a plan of action, is this any more than a dream?  

Performance tracking can make the dream a reality (and maybe avoid some nightmares along the way)! 

Setting mini goals based on your data is a great way to improve your performance. For example, if you three-putt four times in a round, you may look to reduce this to two or one.  

Using the free Shot Scope app, you can see where your putts are missing as well as the distances from which you struggle. Focus on those during your practice sessions and you’ll start shedding strokes. 

It’s not hard when you know what to work on. 

As you start to hit these mini goals, you start to edge towards your main goal: better scores. 

Reason No.4 – Course management 

The phrase “course management” gets thrown around a lot these days, particularly after you lose a match! Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have tried to hook a 5-iron though a two-foot gap on that dogleg par-4, but there’s a lot more to course management than avoiding bad decisions.  

If you are playing with someone who drives the ball 220 yards and you knock it 50 yards past them consistently (look at you, big dog!), should you approach the course in the same way?  

Probably not. 

On courses you play regularly, performance tracking can identify the holes that are costing you shots and the ones where you are gaining them. Utilizing the Shots Plotted feature as well as Strokes Gained Rank, you can devise a course strategy unique to your game.  

Likewise, you can also make use of the MyStrategy feature, on the Shot Scope app and dashboard, to take your preparation to the next level with the data-driven strategy builder.  

Execute your strategy and lower scores will follow. 

Reason No.5 – Track improvements

Of all the reasons to track on-course stats, seeing your game transform is the most rewarding. After targeting your weakest areas and setting goals, you will be able to reflect on the progress you have made.  

Shot Scope’s performance tracking allows you to filter for different seasons so you will be able to directly compare your statistics from one year to another and see where you’ve made progress.  

This allows you to set new goals and continue in the never-ending pursuit of golfing perfection. 

Performance tracking – it just makes sense 

A common misconception is that performance tracking is a time-consuming task but it does not have to be.  

As mentioned, you can easily and quickly look at some very simple statistics or delve deeper on the free Shot Scope app—it is entirely up to you.  

The most important thing is that the information is there for you to look at whenever it suits you, allowing you to begin making informed decisions about your golf game. 

Shot Scope’s free mobile app and website dashboard contains more than 100 performance statistics unique to your game and, again, there’s no annual fee to track your stats. 

To access such valuable information, simply screw in the plug and play tracking tags available with products such as the PRO LX+ and start tracking now.