How to keep a golf journal: what to write after every round

A golf journal is a record of what happened on the course and on the range, written down while you still remember why. The score on its own tells you very little. A 97 with 40 putts and a 97 with four penalty strokes need very different practice, and the total on the card looks the same for both.

Paper notebook or app

Either works. The best golf journal is the one you fill in after every round, so pick the one you’ll still be using in August.

A paper notebook or log book is cheap, and nicer to flick back through than a screen. A pocket one lives in the bag, and a waterproof one survives a wet day. The catch is that you do the sums yourself: averages, trends and “how many three-putts this month” all mean counting by hand.

A golf journal app adds up the numbers for you and keeps photos with the round. It does need your phone, though, and it’s easy to log the score and never get round to the notes.

Plenty of golfers do both. Mark the scorecard as you play (a dot for a fairway, a circle for a green, a number for putts), then copy the totals into the notebook or app at home. The printable page below has a box for each of those totals and room for the notes that go with them.

What to write after a round

The numbers

Keep the list short enough that you’ll fill it in every time.

• Date, course and tees, so you can compare rounds on different courses.
• Score.
• Putts. Count every stroke you take on the green; a putt from the fringe doesn’t count. Mark your three-putts next to the total, because they’re usually the easiest shots to get back.
• Fairways hit, on par 4s and par 5s. Note which side you missed on. Missing left every time tells you more than the total does.
• Greens in regulation: on the green in two shots fewer than par, so one on a par 3, two on a par 4 and three on a par 5.
• Penalty strokes: lost balls, out of bounds, penalty areas and unplayable lies.

To see where you stand, here’s what golfers average at each handicap, from amateur round data reported by MyGolfSpy and Golf Monthly:

Handicap	Greens in regulation	Putts per round	Three-putts per round
5	41%	30.3	1.5
10	32%	31.2	2.4
15	21%	32.1	3.8
20	14%	33.4	4.6
25	9%	34.3	5.8

A 25 handicapper hits one or two greens a round, so there’s no point measuring yourself against tour stats. Compare your rounds with each other.

The notes

The numbers say where the shots went. The notes say why.

• What cost you shots. Name the holes and the shots: “7th, driver out of bounds right”, “two three-putts from 40 feet”. Be specific enough that you could go and practise it.
• What went well. A line or two is plenty. It tells you what to keep doing, and it makes the journal more pleasant to read back.
• How it felt, as a score from 1 to 5. A tired or rushed round explains a lot of numbers.
• Weather and conditions: wind, rain, firm or soft greens, the temperature. A cold, wet 95 can be a better round than a calm 91.
• One thing to practise before you next play.

Questions to ask yourself after a round

If the notes won’t come, answer these:

1. Where did the big numbers come from? Look at every double bogey or worse and write down what started it.
2. How many shots went on penalties and three-putts? Add them up. That’s often the cheapest saving in the round.
3. Which club did I trust, and which did I avoid?
4. Did I make a bad decision, like going for a green I couldn’t reach or hitting driver on a tight hole?
5. When did it start going wrong (or right), and what changed?
6. If I played here again tomorrow, which hole would I play differently, and how?

What to log after practice

Practice entries can be shorter. Their job is to let you check later whether the practice made any difference to your scores.

• What you did and for how long: “putting green, 30 minutes”, “range, 50 balls, wedges”.
• A drill with a score. “Holed 14 of 20 from 4 feet” or “8 of 20 chips finished within a club length” can be compared week to week. “Putted well” can’t.
• The swing thought or feel that worked, in your own words, so you can find it again.
• What you’ll work on next time.

For drills worth logging, putting practice at home has several with targets and rep counts.

How often to write

• After every round, the same day. Five minutes does it.
• After every practice session, two or three lines.
• Once a month, 15 minutes reading back.
• At the end of the season, a longer look that sets the plan for the winter.

The quickest way to spoil a golf journal is to leave out the bad rounds. They have the most to tell you.

Looking back over a month or a season

Once a month, put your last four or five rounds side by side and add up each column: putts, three-putts, penalties, fairways missed left and right, greens. Then read the “what cost you shots” lines and count how often each problem turns up. Whatever appears in most rounds, or costs the most shots in total, is what you practise. Pick one thing, not four.

Some common patterns, and what to do about them:

What the notes keep saying	What to practise	A target to log
Three or more three-putts a round	Lag putts from 20 to 40 feet, then 3-foot putts	Of 10 lag putts from 30 feet, how many finish within 3 feet
Penalties off the tee	Teeing off with a club you can keep in play, aimed away from the trouble	Of 20 range balls, how many finish between two markers you treat as the fairway
Missing greens short	Club choice on approaches: take one more club	On the course, whether each approach finishes short, long or pin high
Doubles from around the green	Getting chips on the green first time	Of 20 chips from different lies, how many finish on the green
Bad first few holes, fine after that	A proper warm-up before the first tee	Your score on holes 1 to 3 compared with the rest

For that last row, the golf warm-up routine has versions for 5, 15 and 30 minutes.

Give the change a month, then check the same column again. If your three-putts have gone from four a round to two, the journal has earned its place in the bag.

At the end of the season, look at the whole year: your best and worst rounds and what they had in common, your scores by month, and which practice you kept up and which you let slide. If breaking a number is the aim, how to break 100 shows how these stats turn into a scoring plan.

Where Golf Journal fits

If you’d rather not do the sums by hand, Golf Journal for iPhone and iPad logs the same numbers hole by hole (strokes, putts, fairway hit or missed left or right, green in regulation, penalties), with notes, a 1 to 5 feel rating and photos on each round. Practice sessions keep the area, time, balls and notes, and your swing cues and drills carry over from one session to the next. You can plan a practice session from a round’s notes, and the insights show your scoring, hardest holes, scores by month and practice time by area. Golf Journal Pro adds a printable PDF season report, which is handy for that end-of-season look back.