Advanced analytics have made a huge difference for players at the game’s top level. Not only are leaders like U.S. captain Stacy Lewis using detailed stats and insights to make pairings decisions at events like the Solheim Cup, individual players now have more intel than ever before to use in crafting their personal improvement plans.

But what about recreational players? We may not have Shotlink at our disposal during every round, but according to GOLF Top 100 Teacher Justin Parsons, stat tracking can be an important building block for any player’s game-improvement plan, and it all starts with some basic, easy-to-compile categories.

In a video posted to Titleist’s YouTube page, Parsons explained how Shotlink data has enabled him to see where the players on his Tour roster are underperforming, enabling him to create a performance plan geared toward improving those areas.

“The more you can delve into your game and the more that you can practice according to your findings, the more your practice can target your scores and your scores can then improve,” Parsons said.

Getting started is easy. You can start tracking your stats using apps like GHIN, or simply do it the old-fashioned way, by taking notes on your scorecard.

“At the most entry level, you can begin to keep maybe your fairways, your greens hit,” Parsons said. “You can certainly begin to keep how many shots you’re taking to get up and down within 30 yards. And perhaps you can have a putts total.”

These four categories alone will tell you a lot about the state of your game. And once you identify a deficiency in a broad category like fairways hit, you can dive even deeper into a more specific problem, like counting misses to the left or right. Or if hitting greens in regulation is a glaring issue, you can start tracking the distances giving you the most trouble. Ideally, you can then relay that information to an instructor.

“Share that [information] with your club professional or your teacher and and let them give you some ideas as to some of the drills and some of the exercises that you might want to do to get better,” Parsons said.

Don’t have a personal instructor? GOLF.com has plenty of content to help you, whether you’re struggling with shots off the tee, approaches or short game. Click here to access our arsenal of instruction articles and videos. And to watch a video version of Parsons’ stat-tracking tip in it’s entirety, click here.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.