Can data make you a better golfer? Yes, states Chris Trott, aka @trottiegolf. In this video, filmed at @fullswinggolf HQ in Carlsbad, Trottie discusses his experience with Clippd, the performance analysis app for golfers who are serious about their game. He shares insights on how he uses Clippd to assess strengths and weaknesses in his game, how it shows him what to practice, and even how Clippd data impacts his equipment choices and bag set-up. Trottie emphasizes the significance of Shot Quality and what it means for game-improvement and monitoring trends in his game, as well how it positively impacts the mental side of golf, including confidence and mindset. He concludes with thoughts on where his game is at, his future goals and how he will keep using Clippd to drive progress.
Takeaways
Clippd provides a performance heat map for golfers.
Understanding strengths helps in focusing practice efforts.
It’s crucial to have a structured practice plan.
Shot Quality is a key indicator of performance.
Equipment changes can be informed by good data.
Clippd helps build confidence.
Regular analysis of performance trends is essential.
Mental game strategies can enhance overall performance.
Identifying weaknesses allows for targeted improvement.
Continuous learning and adaptation are important in golf.
Chapters
00:00 1. Current Player Quality & Recent Performance
00:49 2. Player Ability Comparison
01:49 3. Performance Heat Map
03:44 4. What To Work On: Identifying Areas for Improvement
04:43 5. Filtering What To Work On: Importance, Strengths
05:44 6. Enhanced Putting Analysis
06:51 7. Putting performance insights
08:08 8. Validating coaching with data
09:08 9. Drills & What To Practice
10:33 10. Importance to Scoring & Shot Quality Trend
11:11 11. Enhanced Data Approach: Strategy Insights
12:38 12. Strengths & Super Powers
13:43 13. What To Work On: Longer-Term Fixes
14:54 14. Verdict on my game
I’m looking at this weekly if not every other day or certainly whenever I’m thinking about my golf game and literally was mid90s on total player quality less than four days ago. Um and I’ve played once in the last four or five days. So if we just go into activities you can see I shot 76 which is four over which is not amazing. Look at it straight away. Putting was good 101 and that’s shot quality. Short game not so good. Approach play not very good which has been a trend for a long time which we’ll talk about. But driving was a positive from that last round of golf. If you look at total player quality you can see here 89. Now if I click that then it shows me tour average which is where I’ve got it set at is 100. Another interesting thing here which I’ll do for you is to go into settings and uh we can follow along as we do this display preferences and you can see in it says there and I’ve clicked on it. I can put this against D1 College, which is actually quite tough usually if you go against D1 College, certainly off the tea, because they hit it quite hard and far. But I’ve been toying between tour average and as my game was struggling now trending in a better direction, male plus handicap golfer. So if we hit that and save and then go back to the screen, total player quality at 89, you can now see that a male plus golfer is 93. So sometimes when you do it against a tour player and you see that tour average is 100, it’s a great aspirational barometer, but real realistically I’m not playing as much golf as a tour player. So sometimes I drift into male plus handicap and 89 to 93 makes me feel a bit better about my overall player quality if I’m being honest. Your first time looking at your clips and you want a feel for what you’re doing. So let’s say you put a lot of rounds in. If you hit the icon, which mine is a little trotty golf face, and then you slide down there, and I’ve now got in front of me, performance heat map. This is my favorite part of clipped because it gives me the traffic light system. And that right there, that view I’m looking at, which which has got the famous clipped rings above it, and then the performance heat map, last 20 rounds. Look at everything in green. that is really a true sign of how you’ve been working on your game and playing. Then I always think 20 rounds, if I’m being honest, is too many. So I move it to four rounds. And that then highlights to me, which I actually was thinking about practicing today if I have time, short game. And that would be a valid thing to look at because you can see that it’s in a light pink which means it’s starting to move towards red. Red becomes a troublesome area by having the pink in there. It’s like, hey, just get an eye on that. But then if you look at other areas, white the approach play hasn’t changed. I do need to change my iron shafts. I think my iron shafts need to be a fraction heavier. And this winter I’m going to attack that because generally if a righthander misses left can sometimes be equipment. And a great positive out of this is that there is like a light green on the driver. D driver I’ve been working a lot on. It’s 85 which we know versus a male plus golfer 93 shot quality is your average. So 85 is trending in a better direction for me. And I’ve actually been working on swing and I’ve been hitting a lot of drivers off the deck because that for me as a golfer stops me from backing up and uh causing issues. So it’s it’s good. So once you’ve got to a point where you’ve looked at your overview of your game, the next place you need to go to is what to work on. And the reason you need to go there is because it tells you what to do with your time. We can get sucked into block practice all the time. and we can get sucked into I feel like okay I need to work on my short game like I’ve already pointed out look in the heat map short game is potentially moving to light red possible concern but can we confirm that with clipped and if you dive into what to work on you then see in the breakdown here if I hit that tab that says recommended I have six different options so again much that I have reset myself to be looking at the areas of the game that need work and then reset everything to have that against a male plus golfer so that I’m not hindering the confidence. Confidence is important that we keep that going here. If you then look at weaknesses, we could click that. Strengths, I always like to start there because this gives you an idea of where your game’s at to enable confidence. And you can see here putting 8 to 15 ft. Literally at the top of that, you’ve got the little circle graph, and you can see that putting makes up 29% of my game in terms of importance to scoring. About 6 to 8 months ago, I actually changed to a uh I’m going to say it here, but a broomstick. And as a result, well, the answers are in there. You know what I mean? Now, it’s only 1% of importance, but the shot quality trend on that bad boy is 105. Remember if to tour averages 100 you really could go down the route of saying like that has changed my putting and I think that’s why it’s changed my scoring. So confidence is a big thing. Clip is going to give you feedback but you also want to change your co your narrative here. You got to do that when you look at this. I do a lot of potter drills through gates now and try and put a chalk line down. I actually try and use the clipped round the world drill when I feel my stroke is good. But it’s interesting that recently through gates I hit the left gate a lot more than the right gate when I practice. And if you look at this that then converts to 17% left to right makes and right to left makes 11%. If you then go back to that shot quality n I’m a better left to right putter which would make sense because you’re pulling them. So if your tendency is to pull and you pull a left to righter you make the entry point to the hole greater. So this shows how well I know my putting and it shows it’s again confidence inducing how much time I’ve put into my actual putting to be able to stand here and confidently tell you what are my tendencies because golf’s all about your tendencies and once you have control of your tendencies then you can make more putts. Trying to look at the game as a whole, 125 one putts. You could put that down to everything has a cause and effect. Approach play might not have been as good as it could have been because there’s been a lot of chip shots that have hit in there pretty tight, pretty close. 13 three putts. Give myself a hard deal for three putts to be fair. Don’t like them like everyone else. But when you’ve had 514 putts, it’s a pretty good number. As I go down in this, obviously, you’ve got broken down into rounds, your putt distance, all length. But I think the thing that I’m proud about is 97 is great. Again, that’s over over 20. I would move this to four. I always like to get into four. And if we do that on the summary there, well, I mean, look at that. 104. That’s absolute bladesman territory. As your shot quality sits at 104, it looks like the uh sweeper, the broomstick, the Bernard Langanger, Sam Torrance, the Lucas Glover club, Adam Scott is here to stay is what it looks like. That’s what that tells me when when you put him like that. You just you don’t even need a head cover on the thing. You just let it do whatever it’s got to do. I actually sought out a lesson, two lessons with golf coaches very famous in the short game chef Parker McGlaughlin and Derek Deinsky who is a short game coach out in Arizona. I went to see both those guys about year ago and you could see as I go back 9 months and you can see I hit an all-time low of 70 on shot quality around the greens. That’s a real problem because if you’re that low, then you’re in a dark spot. But that view that I just showed you there of seeing the graph increase, that validates not only the wedges, but it validates that you trip out to Arizona to see these golf coaches. just to fix your technique, even at the level of golf that I’m playing, but to keep on top of it with a coach really puts you in a place where all of a sudden you can turn things around and get it back to where it needs to be. I go what to practice and I have my favorites. It’s very hard, isn’t it? We all have our favorites. But right now, it’s funny because recommended what’s come up, which is one of my favorites, is the wedge ladder. So, I do like the wedge ladder. Anytime I’m at the kingdom because it’s premium golf balls, it’s outside, I’ll try and go through a wedged ladder. So, I add that to my practice plan. I need to do mid iron play. Again, I tend to save that to a good range with grass and good golf balls. Uh, another good one that I like is six foot conversion zone for around the greens. I’ve already alluded to that. Club roulette. I would do club roulette around the greens as well because I think that’s good for creativity. reminds me of my youth. And then when it comes to putting I tend to do a lot of the round the clock drill, three to 12 feet. That’s the one if I’ve I’ve got time for only one. I’ll do that. And the reason I picked that was based on and we have to hop around a bit now. I’ve gone to my performance, but putting is 29% of my importance to scoring. It was it was more than that. It used to be higher. The whole game used to rely on putting. That’s another great thing about this that circle graph changes and you can see that my approach play is now 35%. So I am looking to embrace a new practice plan that will cater a little bit more towards approach play. I think anything over 11% importance is pretty significant. But then you have to lean in on shot quality trend. And if you go for the third one down, around the green fairway, that’s at 93. So for me to go out there and look at a practice plan that include a lot of around the greens fairways, well 93 is that that’s acceptable. What is more concerning, and we’ve already highlighted this, is this approach play. It’s 12% and it’s 100 to 140, and the shot quality is 79. I I think if we hit enhanced on that from looking at this, there’s a right bias. So again, I I had it in my head that the left bias was maybe what was in there, but I will go down here to this end result relative to pin all pin positions. And you can see that if I start to get Q on golf shots that are at the corners of the greens, then I start to struggle with front pins. Middle pins are obviously naturally a lot more advantageous. And the thing that I noticed from looking at this is that that front left pin is not particularly favorable for me. Now, there’s not been many shots at it from 100 to 140 yards, but it’s just not a good pin for me. So, I think we have to look at how well do you do to front left pins? Is that a case of let’s maybe work on different targets rather than going straight at those front left pins? But it’s definitely something that you look at 100 to 140 yards, you should be scoring well there. There shouldn’t be a pin for my level of golf that is causing you problems. In my mind, everyone has a strength in their game, right? And my only gripe about my bunker game is that I don’t hole enough. So think about that. If that is your answer as to where your bunker play is, it’s never an area that I worry about. It’s not an area that I practice. I think now having gone for the short game lessons and got more understanding about the technique and for me it’s the height of the handle and how close you stand to the ball. I think that is why I’m good out of bunkers because the delivery is very consistent. But on the same note, I think because it’s 95 decreasing, I’m not going to try and rebuild my bunker game. I actually am going to be quite mature about this for a change. And I’m going to live on the bunker game that I have because I think it works for all the different types of sand that I play on. I think if it’s a good lie, it’sund I mean, look at that bunker stances and shot quality. If it’s a good lie, it’s 110 on the shot quality. And this is where the long game is not where I want it. Like approach 180 yards plus importance 5% opportunities high there and then off the tea importance 5% opportunity low driver. I think those two go a little hand in hand. You could question you know again your makeup the seven would have had in hasn’t been great these last couple of months. Does that need to be reviewed? Um, the four iron is good. I thought the five iron was okay, but truth is I probably don’t hit many greens with my five iron. So again, if I go into that 180 plus and I go enhanced let interesting there’s a left bias now. So with those short irons I have a right bias. The long irons I have a left bias. If we look at all end results to pin, well, again, it tends to be your tendencies are left and your shot quality. I’m all right on the front pins. I’m good on the back pins. Kind of all over the map. I I just think I need to put a bit of time in on my game, you know what I mean? And that’s evident when it comes to long irons, basically. I would give my ability to bounce back and find the right things to work on that have come through clipped. I’d score that an A. I really would. Head space in the game now is probably at a B. I would say that but I’ve come from bad. Real bad. Like I I had a period where I stopped playing for a while. Game was not in a good place. I’d say now it’s a B+ A minus. probably B+ because I’m a harsh critic and there’s still like the approach play lets it down and there’s plenty more in the can but I’m trending the right way. I’m obviously a little disappointed that the winter’s coming because we’ve got through a lot of the negative play here but the things that are important to me like short game is back close to where it needs to be. So I’d say B+ is a fair fair marker on it and a lot of that’s come as a result of knowing what to work on.
