Using The Grint for game improvement

I decided to the the $40 Pro membership at TheGrint.com. I have only entered scores and putts, by hole, for 22 rounds. It's already giving me some good stats. To make more use of it, I would need to track FIR, penalties, sand, direction of missed shots, proximity and whatever else. I think the direction of shots and proximity to hole would probably be more interesting to me than FIR, penalties, and sand. I rarely find bunkers and penalties, not often enough to need to develop an action plan about them. I see them as pretty random things, especially penalties. Nothing to grind about. Same with sand; I usually get out of it onto the green, but not to kick in range. It doesn't happen enough to spend practice time on. (I play away from bunkers, probably more than I need to.)

One management principle that I know is true is that "you get what you track". Meaning, employees will tend to perform to what is being tracked. But often at the expense of other important things which are not tracked. So yeah, I could see that tracking FIR will make me value it more and maybe get more of them. But I'm not sure that's a big deal for me. I tailor my tee strategy to each hole, and I think I know my strengths and weaknesses at each tee box.

What do you find as the balance between data tracking effort, and getting something useful out of it? Especially on TheGrint.

I tracked putts and FIR last year on Grint. The stats were cool (especially the Grint wheel), but I always felt cheesed when I would pop up a drive but have it end up as a FIR, then crush a drive and have it roll just off the fairway into the rough for a non-FIR. I also never knew whether or not to count a fringe putt as a putt or not. I guess in the end, the tracking did nothing of much value for me. Stinks now that you have to pay to get a real index. If you just go with the free app, they assign you a 2-digit index range.

By the way, I'll toss out some of my stats just for fun. For the 22 rounds posted, I'm at 7.5 index.

Putts 31.5; GIR putts 2.1; Non GIR putts 1.5

Par 3's: 3.6 Par 4's: 4.4 Par 5's: 5.3 (Our par 3's are long and you have to miss properly.)

Per Round: Eagles: 0; Birdies: 1.2; Pars 9.4; Bogeys 6.3; Dbl 0.9; Worse 0.3

GIR overall 43%. Only half that on the Par 3's. Basically hitting one per round.

Par saves: 51% (I think that's good.)

Not much jumps out at me. I'm going to have to think about my par 3 strategy.

The things that I know I need to work on don't seem like they are going to show up. Like Tee strategy, where to miss on certain approaches, and be better at 4-10 foot putts.

I just started using the Grint this year so only have like 6 rounds in it. I love it though but more because I'm a data guy and just like looking at my stats. I haven't done squat yet as far as working on things as a result of what I see on Grint. Actually, not entirely true-- i bought a putting mat and am working on putting after some horrendous putting rounds. I probably would've known that without the Grint, but seeing the numbers starkly was a motivator for sure. Also, I do keep track of penalties, fairways hit, sand, etc. It's so quick and easy I figure why not. Better to have the data than not.

The only downside if you want to call it that about the Grint is it's got that social networking angle to it but I can't convince any of my golfing buddies to use it. Luddites the lot of them, I guess.

You could change FIR to mean playable drives so that you get better more meaningful data.

For your improvement, I'd look at getting GIR putts under 2.0 and getting one more GIR per round. Your stats and my estimate for my stats are almost identical. One less putt and one more GIR per round is my goal. And reduce the doubles and others.

Those stats are basically meaning less. You should try strokes gained.

I've used it for a couple of years. I don't go as deep into the tracking every club, but I do track the basics.

The thing that has helped is how it shows your strengths/weaknesses of your game relative to your handicap. Some of it is stuff you probably suspect in your own game. For example, I am a horrible putter...so I wasn't surprised to see that weakness. But it can also illustrate some things you may not notice. It showed where my par 5 scoring is too high for my handicap. While the par 5s on my home course are fairly difficult, it made me realize I was giving up strokes there and has me approaching those holes differently.

I am a bit interested in switching to 18 Birdies, which provides more detailed stats. But I have 3+ seasons worth of Grint data. It's sort of like running apps. Once you've been on one for awhile, you had to start over from scratch on something else.

The problem with SG is the data collection.

Now if I could pinpoint exactly what data would be the most useful, the 80/20 principle, then it probably would be worth doing. Is there a website or app like The Grint for SG?

I use Mark Brody's Golf Metrics app. Works great. Most golfers are annal retentive, this just takes it up a notch. ?

18 Birdies does Strokes Gained.

I’ve been using The Grint since the start of my „career“ in April 2018. I’m not logging scores while I play anymore (too distracting), I have the Premium subscription and use the scorecard picture upload feature- it’s great. I log my stats (FIR, putts, penalties) in separate columns on the paper scorecard and upload it after the round. Shows up usually within a couple minutes.

I have been able to draw some valuable conclusions from the stats. I wasn’t aware of how much better I score when I hit GIR, but how little influence missing fairways has. I know they kinda relate to each other, but scoring is way lower when I hit greens and hitting them is not directly related to my driving accuracy, rather distance to green (rough is forgiving here).

I’m trying to get to 30 putts consistently, I’m at 34 now so it will take a while.

I lose too many strokes to penalties („what if score“ stat is eye opening).

I’m bad on Par 3s, which means my irons from 120-200 need work. I’m pretty ok with my wedges and around the green.

Once I saw these trends, I had incentive when heading to the range. And it shows in my game, if slowly.

For me at this stage in my golfing endeavors, the stats are good enough.

I agree with you on FIR.

contemplating on switch to The Grint PRO - trying to figure out how does the app calculate Approach Accuracy and Approach Proximity?

i'm guessing it only does it if you do Shot Tracking....?

thanks in advance

Yeah, you have to shot track, which is a bit cumbersome when you're playing a round and trying to keep a good pace (and be present). I think coming up with a shorthand system for your approaches would be equally helpful (A for within 15', B for within 30', C for not close, and D for way off) - you can just write your score for the hole with an A, B, C, or D underneath? Just spitballing here...

I am starting to look at a couple of strokes numbers gained using my Grint data. They don't calculate it, not that I can see. I find that a GIR is worth about 0.5 strokes. I'm simply looking at putts per GIR and per non-GIR. In reality a GIR hole will be more than a half stroke better versus all other holes because for practical purposes, the GIR means you are not going to get a double, triple, etc. But in isolation, I think the fact that I take 0.5 more putts per GIR, while not spending a short game stroke, is good enough data for me for me to conclude that a GIR, versus an approach shot that misses, is worth a half shot. If my reasoning is flawed, please discuss.

There is a standard formula for the effect of GIR on your final score: Score = 95 - (2 x GIR). That would suggest to me that a GIR is worth 2 strokes. But as I said above, that also includes the effects of disaster holes. I'm more interested in what happens when I hit, or miss, with an approach shot. So I think in that narrower sense, for me it is a half stroke. It seems like I could track par save percentage and get the exact same number.

I have just started entering fairways hit. I kinda don't like it because it includes the holes where I don't use driver, and it doesn't account for good misses in light rough. But anyway, after only a few rounds, my small sample shows a FIR is worth 0.3 strokes gained. Here is a screen shot of the data. I assigned a value of 3 to birdie, 4 to par, 5 to bogey, 6 to double and 7 to other. The average score on the FIR was 4.339, and for missed fairway was 4.654. Again this is a small sample. Two rounds were at my home club with penal rough and trees, and one with very forgiving rough and room to miss. I'll be very interested to see how this goes. Here's the example data.

I love using the Grint but do wish it had stroked gained.  Here is my super simple ‘calculator’ for stroked gained I feel like they could use pretty easily with the data they already collect.  The numbers in () are the stroked gained/lost 
 

Drive:

(-1) missed FIR

(0) FIR

(+1) drive green on par 4

(+1) reachable opportunity on par 5 

Approach (>50y)

(-1) missed GIR from FIR

(0) missed GIR from missed FIR

(0) GIR from FIR

(+1) GIR from missed FIR

(+1) GIR inside 5 feet 

(+2) hole out

Short game (<50y)

(-1) missed green 

(0) on green 

(+1) inside 5 feet

(+2) hole out

Putting 

(-1) missed putt inside 5 feet

(0) missed put outside 5 feet 

(+1) made putt outside 5 feet