From Weir’s missed ten-footer to your scorecard: five numbers worth counting
Mike Weir lost the 2004 Canadian Open on short putts and a watery playoff hole; Nick Taylor won in 2023 with a 72-foot eagle. Your rounds follow the same logic, and five counts on the back of the card show where the strokes go.
In brief
- Mark fairways and greens with the direction of every miss, not just a total.
- Ignore total putts: count three-putts and makes from inside ten feet.
- Record up-and-downs against greens missed; the short game usually hides the most strokes.
- Tag every penalty with the decision that caused it.
- Add up three or four rounds before the season ends and plan your winter practice from them.
At the 2004 Canadian Open at Glen Abbey, Mike Weir had a 10-foot putt on the 72nd hole to become the first Canadian in half a century to win the Canadian Open. He missed. In the playoff against Vijay Singh he missed from 25 feet for eagle, then from five feet, and on the third extra hole a drive, a lay-up and a third shot into the water ended it. Nineteen years later, Nick Taylor finally broke the drought at Oakdale in Toronto by holing a 72-foot eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole.
Two famous afternoons, and they tell you nearly everything about where golf scores come from: short putts that are missed, a penalty that follows a chain of decisions, and a long putt that almost never drops for anyone. The rest of us never get television replays of our rounds. We get a scorecard with one number on it, and that number hides the story. Five extra numbers, jotted on the back of the card, reveal it.
Why the score alone misleads you
Ask a mid-handicapper what is costing them strokes and most will blame the driver. A tee shot into the trees is dramatic and everyone watches it. A 40-yard pitch that stops 25 feet away, followed by two putts, looks harmless, yet it costs as much as that drive. Memory keeps the drama and forgets the quiet leaks, which is why guessing is useless and counting works.
Number one: tee shots in the fairway, with direction
On every par 4 and par 5, mark whether your tee shot finished in the fairway. On a typical par-72 layout that is 14 opportunities. Then add a letter for each miss: L or R.
The letters are more useful than the total. Six misses spread evenly is a consistency issue. Six misses where five go right is a pattern you can manage the very next day by aiming at the left half of the fairway, no swing change required.
Number two: greens in regulation, and where the misses land
You hit a green in regulation when the ball is on the putting surface in one shot on a par 3, two on a par 4 or three on a par 5. For most recreational golfers the count lands somewhere in single digits, and it tracks scoring ability more closely than anything else you can record.
Beside each missed green, note short, long, left or right. Most amateurs will see a column of “short”, which usually means their mental yardages come from their best strike rather than their typical one. That is solved in the bag, with one more club, rather than on the lesson tee. And spring and fall rounds in Canada make it worse: cold, heavy air and soft ground cut carry, so the shortfall grows in April and October.
Number three: putts that tell the truth
Forget total putts. It rewards anyone who chips close and punishes players who hit lots of greens from a distance. Record two narrower figures:
- Three-putts. They measure distance control. More than two a round points to lag putting, which responds to ten minutes of long putts on the practice green before you tee off.
- Makes from inside ten feet. This is the range where Weir’s 2004 title slipped away, and where good and average players really separate. A poor conversion rate usually means a start-line or stroke problem worth taking to a coach.
Taylor’s 72-footer is the exception that proves the rule. Long putts are for getting close. The strokes you can reliably save are the short ones.
Number four: up-and-downs
Each time you miss a green, record whether you then got the ball in the hole in two strokes or fewer. A player around 15 might manage one in five; a strong club player is closer to one in two. Over the nine or ten greens a mid-handicapper misses, that difference is worth several strokes per round.
If both your greens-in-regulation and your up-and-down numbers are low, the short game is your priority. Good news: it needs no power and little space, and wedge distances can be dialled in at a practice green or an indoor facility long after the course has closed.
Number five: penalty strokes, each with its cause
Write every penalty down alongside a single word explaining the decision behind it: driver, water, OB, hero shot, lay-up. Weir’s third playoff hole shows how penalties rarely come from one bad swing; they are the end of a sequence of choices.
Most amateurs drop a few strokes per round this way, and on a home course they come from the same handful of holes. Once the pattern appears on paper, the fix is usually a different club off one or two tees, which you can apply next weekend.
Benchmarks to compare against
| Per round | Shooting about 100 | About 90 | About 80 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fairways (of 14) | 4 to 6 | 6 to 8 | 8 to 10 |
| Greens in regulation | 1 to 3 | 4 to 6 | 8 to 10 |
| Three-putts | 3+ | 2 | 0 to 1 |
| Up-and-downs | about 1 in 6 | about 1 in 4 | about 1 in 2 |
| Penalty strokes | 4+ | 2 to 3 | 0 to 1 |
Treat these as rough guides. The category furthest from the column you want to reach is where your practice time should go.
Reading your card over a season
One round is noise. After three or four, total each category and compare. Almost everyone who does this discovers the same thing: the driver costs less than the three-putts and missed up-and-downs nobody counted. If penalties are the outlier, the fix is strategy rather than practice.
The Canadian season gives this exercise a natural rhythm. Count through late summer, add everything up after your last round, and you have a precise plan for the months when courses are closed. Then measure again when they reopen in spring.
Strokes gained, the metric tour players use, is more precise still because it rates every shot against a benchmark from the same distance and lie. It also requires logging the position of every shot, which nobody does with a pencil. The five counts above get you most of the insight for almost none of the effort.
Where to track your numbers in Canada
A pencil and the back of the card cost nothing and take about a minute a hole.
If you prefer your phone, the free Golf Canada app records total strokes, putts and penalty strokes, and adds accuracy and sand-save statistics, with GPS distances for more than 1,500 Canadian courses. Golf Canada members also get their official Handicap Index in the same place. It can log practice sessions and rounds played at Golf Canada member simulator facilities, so winter work sits in the same record as summer rounds.
Sensor-based systems such as Arccos and Shot Scope go further, capturing every shot automatically and calculating strokes gained; check whether the analysis requires a subscription before you buy. For the handicap side, see our guide to membership versus pay and play, and if the numbers point to a technical flaw, book a lesson with the card in hand. Your coach will thank you. Check your grip and setup and your putter fit too if the putting numbers lag.
Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any of these apps, systems or organizations.
Your card, in five lines
- Fairways hit, with L or R for each miss.
- Greens in regulation, with the direction of each miss.
- Three-putts, and putts holed from inside ten feet.
- Up-and-downs converted, out of greens missed.
- Penalty strokes, each tagged with the decision behind it.
Count them before the snow flies and you will spend the winter practising what actually costs you strokes.
