I do track my stats. I track old-school stats, such as fairways hit, GIR, Up/Down percentage, par 3, par 4 and par 5 scoring, and overall score. I also track where I miss fairways and greens. I find that knowing my stats helps immensely with my enjoyment of the game by helping to set realistic expectations.
It also helps me pinpoint what I need to work on. I’ve been lucky enough to have a webinar with @ScottFawcettDECADE and I’ve also had many Twitter DM convos with @jon. One of the things both of them emphasized with me is that hitting Greens is key to scoring better. As I started tracking GIR stats, I could clearly see that I had 2 issues going on. 1) I was too aggressive with my targets, and 2) I needed to either move up a set of tees or add distance because it’s hard to hit greens when hitting a 6 iron or longer in (for me anyway). This initially led to me changing my strategy, then I got a lesson and now I’m working on distance.
For the year, my GIR percentage is up from 44% in 2019 to 48% in 2020. Over my last 20 rounds, I’m hitting 55% GIR. Also my handicap dropped from 4.0 at the start of the year to 2.5 now.
I think everyone should use data, but they have to figure out how to best use it for them.