Every Course Has One Hole That Owns You. Find Yours.

Every golfer can name it. The par 4 where the tee shot has to start left and you are, predictably, a hooker. The short par 3 that has taken three balls off you this month despite being a lazy 90 metres away — albeit 90 metres surrounded by water, and pelicans.

You know the hole. You start thinking about it two holes early, and you have a story ready about why it does not suit your eye. Some of us even have a hero shot in mind, the one we are definitely going to pull off this time. The ball goes in the water.

What almost nobody can tell you is what the hole actually costs. Not the feeling — the number. How far over par you average there. How often it takes a penalty off you. Which way the tee shot goes when it goes wrong. What happens to your greens in regulation. Without that, the hole keeps its reputation, you keep playing it the same way and hoping for a different result, and the golfing gods keep the arrangement they prefer.

Knowing what you actually do there is the medicine

A dozen rounds of records turn the dread into a strategy, and the strategy is usually less heroic than the one you have been using. Sometimes the answer is a different club. Sometimes it is aiming forty metres from where you have been aiming. Quite often it is deciding, on the tee, to make a bogey on purpose.

But you need two things first. Which one or two of the eighteen are genuinely costing you — by the numbers, not by how the tee box makes you feel. And what you actually do there, on average, across your rounds. Without both, you will keep making the same mistake without knowing which medicine you need. That is why the direction of a miss is worth recording, not just the count.

Note which holes those are, and you have something you can act on the very next time you play them. No swing change required.

Golf is a game of minimising mistakes, so record them

Diary of a Golfer shows you which holes cost you the most and what is behind it, so you can plan a different tactic. The AI helps you read it. All of it rests on the data, because you cannot fix a problem until you have something in front of you that you trust.

Every four rounds, sit down with My Stats and Course Performance open. Look for the patterns, not the round. Rethink how you play the holes on your regular course, or your game more broadly if the dial has not moved. And if the dial is moving, you are improving, which is the whole point.

— Marty