I recently started working with a student Rob B. This student has been away from the game for over twenty years. Say life got in the way. Now that he has some more free time to devote to golf he has returned to the game. He was a 6 handicap when he quit. Keeping the Driver in play for 18 holes was a primary nemesis at the time. His goal is to get back to a six by the Spring of 2015 and then improve from there to his potential.

This is both good and bad. According to Wikipedia goal setting should be “SMART”. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time sensitive completes the acronym. As you can see from his short statement he has met all of the criteria so to speak. Therein lays a problem I believe. While the criterion seems to be met, there is much more to look at here. I’m looking at full swings with a six iron and driver. What about the rest of the game? Such as the other areas to track those stats are:

• Scrambling %: When you miss a green, how often do you up and down?
• Driving Accuracy %: How often do you hit the fairway?
• Greens in Regulation %: How many greens do you hit? Remember, fringes do NOT count.
• Putts per Green in Regulation: When you hit a green, how often do you make birdie?
• Total Putts: How good are you at controlling the speed of your putts? How consistent are you on the greens?
• Sand Save %: How often to you get up and down out of a bunker?

My point here is that we all need to set goals for our game and what we want to accomplish. These goals should meet the criteria and should be SMART. We have to include all parts of the game and have specific goals and objectives for each.