Golf Stat Lab

Golf Stat Lab gets an Update

Faster speed, distance select and a few other new features

Golf Stat Lab got a big update this weekend, and it's all about speed. We had a lot of growth this last year (particularly in Europe and Australia) and when we got over 500,000 shots entered into the system, well, it got a bit slow. No one likes slow, so we went back and rewrote nearly all of the reporting code to make it faster. No more waiting for valuable data. It's not quite Google fast, but its much better than it was.

We also moved to a new bigger server to help with speed, but over the next few days while everything moves over, you may experience some delays. Don't worry, this will get better.

We also addressed a few requests we have received from you, our valued members. What follows is a few of those new features.

Yards or Meters - whatever you want

The number one request this year was from our European and Australian members - distances in meters. Done - meters are in. We redid the way distance is stored in our databases so it does't matter how you enter it, yards or meters, you can see it however you want. Conversion happens immediately so no page reloads are needed to switch between them. If a player enters their shot information in yards, their coach can see it in meters or vise-versa without changing anything. Putts are still measured in feet as requested.

Home is where your Home Course is

Another highly requested feature was the ability to set a "home course". You can now do just that by clicking on the button "Set as my Home Course" on the new round page. Whatever golf course is selected above the button becomes your home course, so the next time you go to enter a round it defaults to that course. 

If you don't a home course set yet, the new round page will load up the courses that match your address (from your profile). If you didn't enter an address, then it does what it used to - so set your address on your profile page and set a home course.

New and Improved Strokes Gained

One of our most popular statistics is Strokes Gained (and Performance DNA). Not to toot our own horn, but we were one of first (if not the first) stat system to implement Strokes Gained. We have heard from quite a few of you that Strokes Gained is one of the reasons you choose us over the other stat programs - so we made it even better.

Strokes Gained is calculated based on how many strokes the average PGA Tour player holes out from a particular distance and shot type. It's a great metric to be sure, but not everyone can hit as far as a PGA Tour player. We have taken that into account by adjusting the Tee and Approach Shot calculations of Strokes Gained based on the history of each player. If you hit, on average, 80% of the distance of the average PGA Tour player, your strokes gained is adjusted accordingly. This has always been true for Performance DNA, but now this adjustment is available to all strokes gained calculations throughout the system. As you improve, your adjustment will change ensuring that you are always given an appropriate goal.

We have also added a new chart to the round entry page showing the strokes gained for each shot type by hole. With this new chart, you can see how performance changes throughout a single round.