Two sessions for club and academy coaches on reading analytics, and on the nuances of playing golf that the analytics can’t see.
Ryan Crysler · RC Greenlight
Every platform reports on your player. None feel like you. Everything in these two sessions is how we turn a player’s numbers into your call on the tee.
What tracking stops short of. Playing golf versus improving numbers. The approach ladder. The five non-negotiables and the house rules, each tied to the shot it changes.
Lesson, Plan, Play, Arc. Building a hole-by-hole plan. How stress travels through a round. Two real cases: El Campeon and The player at Kingsmill.
Session 1 · 60 minutes
A player’s shots are already tracked by many good services. Strokes gained, proximity, GIR by distance.
Every one of them ends at the same place: here is what’s good, here is what’s bad.
What to hit off the tee of a 430-yard par 4, and why. That is the coaching.
Illustrative figures. The first read describes a weakness; the second plays around it and into a strength.
What the numbers say about the player’s bands, misses and trends.
A house rule or non-negotiable that turns the stat into a way to play.
A club, a target or a leave the player can commit to.
A report that only names strengths and weaknesses has stopped at the input.
“A shot the player does not believe in is a worse shot, whatever the yardage says.”
No shot log records whether the player believed in the shot. The coach can.
Recommend the one the player can commit to without hesitation, and decide it before they reach the tee.
Every report uses the same ten bands, so a player’s numbers compare week to week.
40–74 yards: too long for a touch shot, too short for a full swing.
A lay-up number is only a plan when the band it lands in supports it.
Each one changes a shot. That is the test of a rule.
If a club can’t guarantee the fairway, it is the wrong club.
Chips and pitches included. A wedge off the green is a planning failure.
Plan the tee shot or lay-up to a band the player hits greens from.
Every hazard, both sides. Never flirt the edge.
Stress is chosen on the tee, before it shows on the card.
Never leave a 40–74 yard approach. Aim for the player’s best wedge band; a full wedge or a three-quarter wedge are both fine outcomes, and the band they convert decides which.
A 40–74 leave is allowed when the player’s own GIR from that band reads 90% or better, or higher than the next band out. Usually the shorter hitter. It turns on their data, never on preference.
| House rule | What it changes on the course |
|---|---|
| Long side / open side | Aim past the pin, away from the short-sided miss. Never “the fat side”: that is an area, not a target. |
| Short game finishes inside 6 feet | A chip is judged on the putt it leaves. On the green is the floor, not the target. |
| Inside 6 feet is sacred | The standard is 100%, every round. A single miss is a finding. |
| Beyond 24 feet, the target is the leave | Finish inside 10% of the start distance. The damage is the three-putt. |
| Own one band | Practise one band until it moves. Leave healthy bands alone. |
| Every par 5 green in regulation | On the green in 3 or fewer, every par 5. The lay-up is planned to a band that holds. |
| Never escape a recovery lie with a driver or fairway wood | The escape is a controlled iron or hybrid back to a normal lie. |
| Never lay up from the fairway into trouble on a par 5 | The lay-up club has to find the fairway. A wood that finds rough has failed the rule. |
Bring your three to Session 2. We build a plan from them.
Session 2 · 60 minutes
| Hole | Par | Tee club | The line | Leave |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 5 | Driver | Start it on the fairway trees. The green won’t take a long second. | 100 |
| #7 | 4 | Driving iron · 250 | Down the very right edge. More room right than it looks. | 150 |
| #16 | 4 | 250 club | Tee shot to the preferred wedge number. | 100 |
| #17 | 5 | 250 club · right | Right side for the angle, then clear the fairway tree. | 85 |
From the El Campeon game plan. Leaves are the player’s recorded distances, except #7 (150), which is illustrative.
69 · 65 · won by 5
68 · 68 · won by 3 · same plan, same shots
100 on #1, 85 on #17. No long second into a green that won’t hold it.
Driving iron on #7, 3-wood on #11, a 250 club on #16 and #17.
#8 to the base of the middle tier. #12 and #15 to the centre of the green.
The plan didn’t change either player’s swing. It made the decisions before they reached the tee.
The card shows where it landed. The plan shows where it started.
A missed fairway makes the approach harder.
A missed green puts the load on the short game.
Chipping twice a hole means the putter has to rescue it.
Lagging all day is stressed decisions all day.
A verdict names one cause: the earliest link in the chain that fired.
Raise the level one step. One is a finding.
One floors the round at Medium. Two force High.
Printed beside the level. It never lowers it.
Lay-back clubs found 10 of 13 fairways, and both round-2 doubles came from the misses: a 2-wood on 4 and a 4-iron on 14. Rule 1 names the club, not the swing.
Fairways fell from 79% to 64% in round 3, and greens followed.
Rule 1: a lay-back club has to guarantee the fairway.
The tee ball: which club the player can trust to find the fairway.
Every stat ends in a shot, a target or a decision.
And the shot each one changes on the course.
Tee club, line and leave for every hole.
Each round writes the player’s next lesson.
“We don’t sell the data. We sell the coaching of it.”
Ryan Crysler · RC Greenlight
The house rules are published in full at rcgreenlight.com.