Do you track your golf stats? You should……and here’s how

Since joining a golf club again, and playing regularly, I’m keen to get back to tracking my golf stats. About 10 years ago I developed a website for me and a few friends to track our stats. The site became inactive and eventually disappeared from cyberspace after we all stopped playing together a few years ago. I can’t really be bothered trying to get it going again, so decided to go in search of an online stats tool that would work for me.

Over the past few days I’ve checked out golf forums, test drove a few stats tools and read a number of reviews before finally settling on one (possibly 2!). If you’re looking for a golf stats tool, I might be able to save you some time if you read on.

Worldwide

www.oobgolf.com – it’s free, international (contains approx. 30,000 courses from all over the world in it’s database) and has approx. 200,000 users. If you don’t have or need a handicap this would do the job. The free version tracks standard stats like fairways hit, putts, greens in regulation, sand saves. If you want to get serious you can upgrade to OobGolf Addict for US$12 per year, which let’s you track more stats than you can think of

United States

www.ghin.com – if you live in the US and have a USGA handicap, and your club allows internet score posting, then you can use the Golf Handicap Information Network’s (GHIN) free eGolfer package. You can enter your stats online via a PC, iPhone or Blackberry. It makes sense to use the same system to track your handicap and your stats

www.myscorecard.com – if you live in the US and don’t have an official handicap, but want one, try the free MyScorecard. MyScorecard is USGA compliant, so is able to calculate an official USGA handicap for you, as well as manage your golf stats. There a couple of conditions, which you can read here

Australia

www.golflink.com.au – if you play in Australia and have a club handicap, then GolfLink would be a sensible way to go, as you can manage your handicap and stats in the same place. The only catch is that you’ll need to pay about $30 per year for the privilege. You get quite a bit for your $30, including the ability to see how you rank against every other golfer with an official handicap….which is pretty cool

Great Britain & Ireland

It doesn’t look like the Council of National Golf Unions (CONGU), who assign and maintain handicaps in Great Britain and Ireland, have an online system for viewing handicaps or managing stats. OobGolf is probably the best option

My Choice(s)

I play in Australia, so decided to pay the $30 per year and go with GolfLink, rather than using GolfLink to view my handicap, and another system to track my golf stats. Having said that, I am considering the free version of GolfShot for my iPhone as well. I reckon it would be handy to be able to enter my stats straight after the round, and review them while I’m out and about…….. probably overkill, but golf’s like that!

There are loads of golf stats tools on the internet, and you could spend days looking at them all, but if you want to save the hassle,  I think you’d happy with one of these.