2024 Golf Season Review

 

 

Intrigued by that picture? Allow me to explain.

This past year, my brother and I played much of our golf early in the morning.  

 

Very early. 

 

Nine-holes-before-work early. 

 

At times it would still be dark when we got to the golf course. 

 

Now, at some point my dad learned of how early we were meeting up. And being the corny goofball that he can sometimes be (I mean that in the best way possible), he immediately bought us some novelty LED golf balls as a gag gift—a whole dozen, in fact. You see a few of those golf balls in the photo above, on the practice putting green.

And although they don't fly as far as standard golf balls (and feel like rocks when you hit them), you can actually play golf with them. One morning we did try them out for a couple of holes just before sunrise, and I have to say, it was fun seeing a little glowing orb sail through the darkness, bounce down the fairway, and come to a stop. And as you can imagine, even if we hit them off target, they were rather easy to find. Most of the time, however, we just putted around with them on the practice green until it got light enough for us to tee off.

In any case, I thought that would be a fun image to lead off this post to recap my 2024 golf season. (Note: For those of you more interested in trading cards than golf stats, feel free to skip to the bottom of the post, where I share a couple of recent golf card pickups. For those of you who like stats, read on.)

 

I'll start by mentioning that last year I used an app called Golfshot throughout the season. It not only allowed me to enter my golf scores during each round, but it also kept track of some stats and data to help me analyze my strengths and weaknesses. I found the app so insightful that I resubscribed for 2024.

One of the coolest things about using the app for a second consecutive year? I can now filter the stats in order to compare my 2023 season to my 2024 season. 

Did I improve in some categories? Regress in others?

 

Let's find out with a side-by-side comparison.

Fairways

This is an analysis of the percentage of fairways I hit from the tee. I did improve my accuracy a little bit this year, but I know I can do even better. It's interesting that similar to last year, I missed about half my fairways to the left side and half to the right side.

Greens in Regulation

A green in regulation (GIR) means that you've hit the green with at least two shots remaining to make a par. For example, on a par 4, it would mean hitting the green with your second shot. That way, you have two putts to make your par.

I improved in this metric as well, which is great. However, in the real world, a 6% increase in GIR equates to just one additional green hit per 18 holes. If I want to reach my goal of breaking 80 next year, I'll have to get this number up even higher. (36% GIR means I'm hitting about 6 or 7 greens per 18 holes. I'd like to get that up to at least 8 or 9 next year.)

Recovery

When I don't hit a green in regulation (which usually means I'm somewhat close to the green, but have to chip the ball on and try to make that first putt to save par), I was only successful 32% of the time this past year. That's a tick lower than last year. I did save more pars from bunkers around the green this year, but it's a pretty small sample size, so I'm not reading too much into that.

 

The bottom line is that I've got to do better in this category. When I'm pitching or chipping the ball onto the green, I'm just not getting the ball close enough to the hole to make saving a par easy. It's true that there are times when I'll get the ball within tap-in range. However, if I were to average out all of my chips and pitches over the course of the year, I'd guess that my ball is finishing about 10 or 12 feet from the hole. Not quite good enough.

Putting

Another improvement! The 1.89 number in 2024 means that when I hit the green in regulation this past year, I was a little more likely to finish in one putt (birdie) than three putts (bogey). A score of 2.00 would mean that I was averaging exactly two putts per GIR.

Pars

Interesting data here, and more improvement all around. I like how I've gotten the par 3 and par 4 averages down to the "point-5" mark or lower compared with 2023. That means I'm parring those holes about half the time, and bogeying them the other half. I did even better on par 5s, which is cool.

Scoring Pie Chart

The 2024 scoring pie chart confirms the statement from the previous paragraph. Overall, I'm parring about half the holes I play. The birdie percentage went up, too, while bogeys and double bogey+ numbers went down. (Next year I've got to make an eagle!)

Best score

 

 

This year I have to go with a score from a 9-hole golf course. This particular course is referred to as "executive". That means there are only par 3s and par 4s, and even the longest par 4 is fairly short (about 360 yards). Regardless, a score of 1-under 31 is something I'm super happy with. The fairways are pretty tight there, and some of the greens are rather small and hard to hit. 

That birdie on the 3rd hole was actually a chip-in from short of the green, which was great. However, the best shot of the day came on the 9th hole. I'd hit a good tee shot and was only about 110 yards from the green. Unfortunately, my next shot came up in the rough just short of the green, and my chip onto the green also wasn't great, finishing about 10 feet short of the hole. I knew I was 1-under par as I lined up that 10-footer. And I really didn't want to miss that putt. It would have meant a bogey on the very last hole to drop back to even par. As you can see by the scorecard, I rolled in the putt and saved par. I'm a pretty calm and cool guy on the golf course, but I have to admit that I did give a pretty big fist-pump when that putt dropped.

Okay, stats portion over.

To thank those of you for reading this far—and because this is a trading card blog—here are two golf cards I recently picked up in a TCDB trade.

2024 Upper Deck #35 Collin Morikawa and #94 Billy Horschel Season Highlight

 

Collin Morikawa is only 27 years old, but already has 6 PGA Tour victories to his credit, including two majors (2020 PGA Championship, 2021 British Open). Impressively, at the time of this writing, he's made 103 cuts in 122 career PGA Tour starts. And in those 122 starts, he's finished in the top ten 42 times. That's really something!

Billy Horschel is 38, and has collected 8 PGA Tour victories, along with 2 international wins. I picked up his card because he's a gamer. To explain: In the summer of 2023, Horschel was having a really tough time with his golf. He'd fallen well down in the rankings, and even broke down in tears at a press conference after a particularly rough tournament. Since then he's fought right back, gotten his physical and mental game together, and had seven top-10 finishes plus a tournament victory during the 2024 season. At the time of this writing, he sits at #18 in the Official World Golf Rankings.

 

So that's my 2024 golf season review. Overall, I improved almost every metric in 2024 compared with 2023. I'm very happy about that. And Golfshot has shown me pretty clearly where I need to make the most improvement next season.

Playing golf regularly over these past couple of years has also helped me realize a few things about keeping the mind strong and focused throughout the round. For example, a bad score on one hole does not dictate your score for the entire day. And neither does a good score on one hole. As soon as you finish that hole—whether you made a birdie or a bogey or anything else—you've got to put it behind you, settle yourself down, and get focused on the next hole. There's a lot of interesting stuff like that going on in the game of golf. Good life lessons, for sure.

 

One other thing I'm happy about is that I played golf with my brother very often again in 2024. We've been pushing each other to improve, and it's been such a cool experience. This year, our dad even made some appearances! The three of us got out there for 9 holes quite a lot, which was fun, for sure.

 

As for next season, let's list some goals:

• Hit even more greens in regulation
• Save more pars from around the green when I don't reach in regulation
• Get my golf swing a little more consistent and dialed in
• Break 80 at least once
  

 

I look forward to the season, and also to checking back on this post next winter to see how I did with my goals. Similar to the softball season recap from a few weeks ago, I think recording my golf goals here will help keep me motivated and accountable.

Thank you all for reading, and for any encouraging golf-related comments in advance of the upcoming season. 

Any golfers out there? Anyone else motivated to get out on the course or hit some golf balls at the range this coming season? Share in the comment section!