The stat that points to the quickest improvement? Strokes Lost Stupid

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The end of the golf season is the time to ask the hard questions.

Did you achieve your goals? Can you point to improvement?

Another I’ve been circling recently, Am I the same idiot I was a year ago?

We should be clear the definition of idiot is highly subjective, and we’re not talking about your standard-issue dropping-your-phone-in-a-toilet, sending-a-sensitive-email-to-the-wrong-person idiotic behavior. We’re only talking about being a golf idiot, and specifically, the way being a golf idiot might have impeded your progress.

Trivial as this sounds, the course management expert Scott Fawcett says this is an essential step toward becoming a better player. He calls it Strokes Lost Stupid, and it refers to the mistakes we make that were entirely within our control. So it’s not about bad swings or missed putts. But it is about inviting greater risk or not recognizing ways a decision might backfire in a big way.

“You don’t need to do anything crazy to get really good at golf,” says Fawcett, founder of the DECADE scoring system. “I play to a plus-5 and I hit one shot shape off the tee, I aim away from pins, I take my medicine when I’m in trees, I don’t try to make 20 footers, and I hit the same standard stock chip shot 99 percent of the time. It sounds like I’m making it simple, but it’s not that hard from a scoring perspective.”

When I think of Strokes Lost Stupid this year, I could cite plenty of examples, but one in particular jumps out: an important match where I needed to two-putt to win and my ego decided I needed to make it instead.

If they ever convene a Golf Idiots Support Group, the story of how I three-putted to lose that match is where I’d start.

“These are things we can control,” Fawcett said. “If you’re Losing Strokes to stupid, it’s because you’re repeatably choosing to make mistakes on the things you can control.”

Fawcett often invokes the importance of expectation management, a concept loosely translated as “You’re not as good as you think, so stop kidding yourself.” We’ve covered some of this terrain before, even with Scott. He loves to invoke the Tiger Five, which were Woods’ cardinal sins for scoring: no double bogeys, no bogeys on par 5s, no three-putts, no bogeys inside 150 yards and no blown easy saves. All of these are worthy goals, but for a mid-handicapper, a par 5 is bogeyable even when thinking clearly.

Strokes Lost Stupid, meanwhile, are different because they’re avoidable. They speak to moments in rounds when there was a clear sensible choice, and we choose the other one. Trying to ram a putt in when you should have been thinking about lagging it close, or trying to thread a shot through a narrow gap in the trees when the prudent play was to punch out. A whole subcategory can be devoted to short-game shots we think we can pull off because we did it once at the practice green when on one was looking.

In the absence of guarantees, most of these situations are about playing the percentages, which is why I believe it’s possible to be a better and dumber golfer all at once. For instance, consider a shot you used to stink at that you now generally execute better. I think of a 50-yard wedge shot that I used to call “my throw-up zone.” In the past I’d be happy for anything that put me in the middle of the green, but I now believe I can do better, which means I might narrow my target enough to risk missing in a terrible spot.

It’s the type of avoidable decision that cost me in spots this year and one I’m intent on reducing. Fawcett says it’s the easiest way to improve without a minute of practice, which makes tracking our stupid actually quite genius.