Practicing With A Purpose (And With Data)

Before moving to Chicago last fall, I played a lot of golf, but RARELY practiced.

At the range, I would aimlessly fire 8 irons into the sky that fell to their final destination without a roadmap.

If I arrived at the course early before a round, maybe a few drivers and a couple of putts before teeing off. (Honestly, that was, and still is, admittedly, rare.)

I played a TON of golf, especially last summer living out of town. But no matter how much I played, I never saw any improvement. 

To be fair, I never had specific goals in regard to improving, other than wanting my GHIN to go down. 

Any attempt to collect ‘data’ on the course usually fizzled out somewhere on the back-9, and I compiled a collection of similar scores that didn’t actually tell me anything about my game.

Fast-forward, and I’ve been a member at PARennial Golf for just over a year.

When I initially joined, I didn’t have a full grasp on the technology at my fingertips. It took a bit of a learning curve to start to understand the functionality offered by the PARennial app, the facilities themselves, and Trackman.

I’m still learning, but for the first time in my golf career, I have been able to use my time in the facilities to practice with a purpose, generating data that has been both useful and incredibly eye-opening.

Six months ago, in mid-May, I started tracking every practice session that I had at PARennial, and decided that I would focus on one specific club (my 5-wood) and just a few key Trackman data points: carry distance, total distance, club speed, ball speed and smash factor.

I collected a sample of 200 shots over a week’s worth of practice sessions (no need to normalize the data because the conditions were the same each session) and then removed any massive outliers (both good and bad) via a statistical outlier test/confidence interval calculation.

I did the same thing over the last week, collecting the same data from 200 5-woods shots, and running the same outlier tests/confidence intervals.

During this 6-month period, I played BY FAR, the least amount of golf outdoors on the golf course that I have over the last decade.

I did use SuperSpeed speed training sticks about once a week (sometimes less), but didn’t track any specific data in regard to the SuperSpeed training.

Here are the numbers:

MAY 2024  

5-wood (200 swings at PARennial Lincoln Park on Trackman 4)

• CARRY           202.8
• TOTAL           219.0
• BALL SPEED 130.9
• CLUB SPEED 90.7
• SMASH FACTOR      1.44

NOVEMBER 2024 

5-wood (200 swings at PARennial Lincoln Park on Trackman 4)

• CARRY             221.9
• TOTAL             239.3
• BALL SPEED           145.7
• CLUB SPEED           100.1
• SMASH FACTOR   1.46

Obviously, the change in numbers is drastic (and I’ve noticed them continuing to creep up in my sessions since my November data collections), but they don’t tell the whole story.

I was initially amazed to have such pronounced changes without a deliberate goal to increase or improve any particular measurable. But the more I think about it, it all has to do with the way I have learned to practice at PARennial.

I truly practice with purpose, and the proof is in the data.

I wanted to kick myself for not figuring this out sooner, but I never could have gotten to this point without PARennial.

More than anything, I am excited to set some new goals, work my tail off this winter and see how actual practice hopefully translates to on-course improvement.

For now, I think I’ll give my poor 5-wood a breather.

- Chris Hrabe