[chrisfoleygolf]

Thanks for posting Dan.

If a player is truly driven to improve being able to assess a player's game is critical. The reason why Weight Watchers is so successful in getting people to lose weight is they hold them accountable. You have to weigh in. They give you a plan: what you should eat, the exercise you should do, and every week you have to come in and weigh in, so they hold you accountable. If you have a student and they're providing data, you can give them a lesson and provide them with what to practice. That might be x number of Trackman tests or some other skills test or drill in Clippd, but if they come back in two weeks in and you can see they haven't done any of that, why are they even taking the lesson? Data can help with accountability. I think this is especially true with juniors where developmentally they often don't have the responsibility required without somebody coaching them in the process of staying accountable.

[Dan]

@chrisfoleygolf thanks for posting Chris. The accountability aspect is something we have heard time and again from the coaches we’ve been lucky enough to work with thus far. We have some exciting news coming on that in our next release, which is scheduled for next week.

[stevenorrcoaching]

Thanks for the question Dan and looking forward to being part of the community here. A lot of very interesting points so far on the use of data. I’m personally a big fan and advocate of data / stats but only if, as @hugh.marr said, it is influencing the bottom line. The big 5 reasons I have for use of data would be:

1. Insight (as previously mentioned). It can help a player understand their game in ways they hadn’t previously understood.

2. Preparation. If used well they can be used to help players prepare in advance for events. Opens up a whole other debate on whether ‘peaking’ for events is possible in golf and if so how is that done?

3. Confidence. From a psych perspective for me data can be a key source of confidence.

4. Also from a psych perspective, quality practice has been shown in numerous studies to be a key separator of high performers. I feel data can help players practice in a more thoughtful and intentional way.

5. Helps the coach do their job better. I often say to players that I will do a better job if they keep data because simply put, I will be making better decisions around their game and what they are doing.

Those would be my big 5 around ‘why’ to use data. I’d be very interested to hear views on why players are sometimes resistant to using stats. For me the biggest reason by far is that players say that they have done them in the past but nobody has gone through them with them to help them understand what they mean and how to use them. Essentially then a pointless exercise. So perhaps the responsibility starts with us as coaches to help drive this new behaviour in a player. Would be keen to hear any views on this.

cheers

Steven

[brianjacobsgolf]

@hugh.marr
so sorry for delay Hugh..the data points seem to connect to my students the best after years of experience. If I can get it down to a few manageable data points the students are more apt to measure. If I am asking for 20 things or 10 even they miss the mark. 4 seems to work best in play.

[brianjacobsgolf]

@chrisfoleygolf Hi Chris and TOTALLY agree.

[hugh.marr]

Thanks for replying Harvey, a couple of comments. I think we need to be careful with the WITTW mentality in golf, a player can have a hugely successful year and not win, to have three wins in a career is upper echelon stuff! My preference is to use RELEVANT data to drive players to their "wins", the point you make about what it takes to transition is particularly important in golf where players try to compete at levels they are not ready for. The data can be used to help payers benchmark their game and know when they are ready to step up, this simply isn't happening on golf right now.

[hugh.marr]

@stevenorrcoaching Great stuff Steven, identify key data for that player's improvement (measured by hitting it fewer times) and the get to work on improving. If we used that simple approach with every player we worked with would golfer's get better?

[hugh.marr]

@brianjacobsgolf Completely agree Brian, gathering and reading data is not coaching. Interpreting the data isn't coaching but it does create the opportunity to coach the player appropriately

[hugh.marr]

@chrisfoleygolf I love this Chris, a great way of challenging the "form" or "model" based coaching out there. Is this making the player better? The data will tell you

[derekhoopergolf]

@hugh.marr A little late to this thread. Great question Hugh and the order of your questions is perfect. I see our data currently being driven by the tech companies in terms of them showing Coaches what can be measured, and then we are left to figure out how to analyze that data, if it is useful and how do we use it to help the player in front of us. It would be nice if this was more Coach driven but not sure if that is possible. I am not sure if we can reach a reasonable conclusion on your questions 3 through 4 until we answer question 1. Presenting Coaches with a hierarchy of data analysis would be very useful and I hope Clipped and the other Coaches on here will be the leader in helping us develop that.

I would suggest that the golf coaching industry on the whole is still so new to all the data that is available, coupled with new data points coming at us so fast, that we are still figuring out how to analyze it correctly. If we are unable to analyze the data then we have next to no chance to having it guide player improvement.