More friendly stat's

Darren

Golfshake has excellent stat's - thank you for that. I wonder if the following additions would enhance your site and what users (especially players above single figures) can gain from it?

(1) a "what if?" handicap - this would be in addition to the "official"  handicap and simply show what handicap the player would have if they never 3 putted (or worse) and never incurred penalty strokes. I have worked out that my current "what if?" (or "no silly mistakes" handicap is 11.8 compared to my official handicap of 15.6. This is really helping me focus, as it makes it easy to see what my handicap could (and should) be. I know it is possible to see this in other ways using the existing stat's, but that is too detailed and not as fun.

 (2) "shots to reach the green?" - this is similar to GIR but perhaps more appropriate for people not already playing off a single figure handicap e.g. is the average of 6 on par 4's due to 4 shots to the green and 2 putts or 3 shots to the green and 3 putts (neither is differentiated by GIR nor easily seen in any other way)?

(3) "up and downs around the green?" - the site captures Sand Saves (although I don't see them reported?), but not any indication of how effective players are at getting up and down from within, say, 5 yards of the green (something very important for low scores). This would obviously require more data capture and input from the player, but not much.

(4) "approach shot accuracy?" - this could be incredibly useful - perhaps either a single number representing distance from the green after the approach shot (e.g. 6 yards) or, better still, distance before and after (e.g. 120 yards and 6 yards). The results could be graphed. Maybe a checkbox "On green?" could denote that the ball reached the green and was 6 yards from the flag?

I'm most excited about the prospect of (1) and (3). (1) and (2) have the benefit of no further information needing to be captured. (4) might be going a bit far(!) 

I look forward to hearing what you think.

All the best,

Hugh 

Hugh, you must have an incredible recall of your round afterwards or spend half your time on the course recording what you are doing.  Maybe it would be worth while having a what do you record on your scorecard thread.

I could tell you my score and what club I took  from where, on every hole of my last game, even a week after it. I have a photographic memory.

You must be on the course for hours, Dave. I am surprised you have other players conversations to listen to going through that rigmarole.

Hugh, points noted and I'll see what I can do.  I'll post back here prob in a months time once I have the next bout of updates live.

REgards,  

Darren. 

I used to record my stats on course but now just record the score. the rest i can remember for several days after the game unlike family birthdays and aniversaries which i cant remember for more than 2 secs.

2 seems like a good idea although isnt it obvious from the shots taken minus the putts = how many to the green

Darren

Great, I look forward to anything you can produce along the lines of the above. If I can be of any help, please E-mail me.

One additional point about why I think (1) and (3) above could really help people isolate areas for improvement and meaningfully quantify the benefit: option (1) or the "no silly errors" handicap will obviously do this instantly, but if a user could see their "up and down from within 5 yards of the green" was, say, 5% (very low) and enter a "what if?" figure of, say, 30% - they might see their official handicap of 25 compare to a "what if?" handicap of 20 i.e. help them realise how much this could actually help their game as it is based on previous rounds. Put another way using Sand Saves, I would suggest trying to improve Sand Saves from, say, 20% to 50% is less effective in reducing handicap if you go in bunkers only once or twice a round, something that would be seen by little or no drop in your "what if?" handicap.

Although these things sound complicated when written down, I think they would be easy to operate and very powerful (more fun and more amenable than analysing GIR's etc. and trying to 'forecast' benefits), and hopefully relatively easy to code. 

Hugh