Features

Stat tracking, and how much of it you actually need

ParPath turns the numbers you record into a Game Profile: a radar across putting, approach, driving, short game and scoring, plus a par-type breakdown. Here is what each figure counts, what the labels beside them are worth, and which numbers to start with at your level.

The Game Profile radar

The radar is one shape drawn from your recent golf, so you can see where your game is strong and where it leaks without reading a table of twenty figures.

It is built from your 20 most recent rounds, not your whole history. That is deliberate: the point is current form, and a window stretching back three years describes a golfer who no longer exists. A round qualifies if it is complete, or if it carries at least 14 scored holes. Old rounds fall out as you play, and the shape moves.

The axes group into five areas.

One note on the scoring average. It is expressed as an 18-hole equivalent rather than a raw total, so a nine and an eighteen sit on the same scale. The number is your scoring level, not the mean of the totals on your cards.

Rounds on par-3 and executive layouts are left out by default, with the count of excluded rounds shown so you know they exist rather than wondering where they went. You can bring an individual round back in.

What each number actually counts

Definitions live in the guides, so this covers the counting rules rather than the golf. Those rules matter, because two apps can show different numbers for the same round and both be right.

Greens in regulation. Calculated only across holes where you actually recorded a green in regulation answer. Holes you skipped are absent from both the top and the bottom of the fraction rather than counting as a miss, so a round where you tracked five holes does not manufacture thirteen fake misses. What a green in regulation is covers the definition.

Putts. Counted per hole, which is what makes the derived figures possible: one-putt rate, three-putt avoidance, and the split between how you putt after hitting a green and after missing one. Putts per round comes from your average per hole rather than summed per card, so a nine-hole round does not drag it down. If three-putts are your leak, how to stop three-putting follows.

Fairways. Counted on par 4s and par 5s only, and only where the fairway question applied. Holes marked not applicable are excluded rather than counted as a miss.

Penalties. Counted per hole and totalled across the round and the record. The plainest number in the profile and, for most golfers, the most immediately useful.

Scrambling. The percentage of missed greens where you still made par or better. The denominator only includes holes where you recorded both the green result and your putts, because without the putt count there is no way to know a green was genuinely missed and then saved. So scrambling is drawn from a narrower set of holes than your green percentage. What an up and down is explains the concept.

Sand saves and chips. These stay empty rather than showing zero until you have recorded bunker shots and greenside chips. An untracked field is never treated as a zero, which is why a percentage is sometimes absent instead of flattering or damning you.

The par-type breakdown

Averages across all 18 holes hide where the damage is. The par-type view splits your record into par 3s, par 4s and par 5s, and for each gives holes played, average score, average against par, green in regulation percentage, average putts, fairway percentage on the par 4s and 5s, and your best and worst score.

It also carries a distribution: eagles, birdies, pars, bogeys, doubles and triple-or-worse on each par type. That is the part most golfers find useful, because it separates two very different players who share an identical average. A par-4 average of 5.4 built from bogeys is a player with a repeatable game and a ceiling. The same 5.4 built from pars and triples is a player losing a round in three holes, and the fix is completely different.

The pattern this usually exposes is one par type carrying the round. Par 5s averaging worse against par than your par 4s means you are attacking greens you cannot reach. Par 3s stacking up doubles usually means club selection. Both are plan problems, which is what ParPath acts on: every hole marked Green to attack, Yellow to manage, or Red to survive against a target score you pick.

The labels are quick signposts

Alongside some figures the app shows a short verdict, so a number you have never had to interpret before arrives with a plain reading of what it means for your golf.

Those thresholds are plain-English signposts, chosen so a screen full of numbers reads clearly and your weakest areas sort to the top. Read them as a pointer to where to look, with your own trend across twenty rounds as the real signal, so a scrambling rate of 22 percent matters most for which way it is heading over time.

Suggested improvement areas work the same way. They are ranked by arithmetic on your own numbers, which makes them a reasonable place to start, and they get sharper when you pair them with what you remember of the round, the course and the conditions.

Shot-level data and strokes gained

Beyond the per-hole card you fill in with live scoring, a round can be played with shot tracking on, recording individual shots with club and lie. That feeds strokes gained figures split across putting, approach, off the tee and around the green, which appear on the Game Profile when they exist.

Two caveats, and they matter more than the feature description.

These are recent additions. Shot-level tracking and strokes gained arrived in ParPath recently, so there is no deep historical archive waiting for you and nobody has years of it. Your strokes gained record begins the day you start tracking shots, and covers only rounds where you tracked them. Expect a thin sample for a while.

They demand real work per round. Strokes gained needs shot-by-shot data captured accurately, every round, which is a different commitment from tapping a score. Done inconsistently, the numbers are worse than the simple ones you would have got from the basics. What strokes gained is explains why the measure is powerful and what it costs to feed it.

If you shoot 85 to 105, start with the basics

If you shoot between 85 and 105, the basic numbers matter far more than the sophisticated ones, and it is not close. Rounds at that level are lost in chunks: two penalty strokes, a hole that went to 8, three three-putts. You do not need a baseline model to find a chunk. Penalties per round, doubles or worse, the direction of your fairway misses, greens in regulation with where the misses finish, and putts with three-putts counted separately will find every one. The golf stats worth tracking makes this case in full, and this page agrees with it.

The Game Profile shows all five directly, which is the best argument for opening it. The strokes gained splits and club-level detail answer refined questions about shot quality, and they are there when you want them. Start with the five basics if a penalty and a blow-up hole are still costing you five shots a round.

Graduate to the deeper numbers when the basics go quiet: penalties near zero most rounds, doubles down to one or none, three-putts rare. At that point the loud leaks are fixed and the remaining strokes really are hiding in shot quality, which is what the deeper numbers were built to find. Until then, read the five and change the plan.