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One thing about mid-handicap golfers is we don’t fit into any single box. There are the ones who hammer drives but blade every wedge; the kind who make everything for 5; plus, those easily derailed by nerves, lapses in concentration, or generous halfway house pours.

There is no shame in having a thing that holds you back. Everyone in golf has at least one. The shame is in not paying close enough attention to do anything about it.

As part of a season-long project in which three colleagues and I are tracking the progress of our games and our Handicap Index, a worthwhile question is how to interpret the assorted numbers we can track in a round of golf. In the GHIN app, I habitually enter my hole-by-hole scores, fairways and greens in regulation, and putts per round, very often before I even remove my golf shoes. But the goal is not to just use numbers to tell me how I play. But how I can use those numbers to play better.

“Stats are great, but they’re like just telling you that you have a fever,” said Kyle Morris, owner and director of instruction for The Golf Room. “On their own, they don’t do anything to eliminate the fever.”

In 2021, Kyle wrote a story for Golf Digest about what golf KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are worth tracking for players of different levels. When it came to this season’s project, he was a natural coach to consult on where and how we should be channeling our energy.