Whether you're looking at the scorecard or the summary, the PAR Golf app can quickly tell you how many greens you hit in regulation and how to increase the number of greens you hit, but first... What is a Green in Regulation (GIR) and why do we care?
Hitting a Green in Regulation (GIR) means that you were able to get your golf ball onto the putting surface in PAR-2 strokes for that hole. Effectively, the par for a given hole is the 'expected' number of shots for an 'expert' player. The term 'Green in Regulation' assumes that it would take that same 'expert' player two putts on the putting surface to hole out. Therefore, you have hit a 'Green In Regulation' if it took you the same number of strokes as it would have taken that expert player (par-2). For a par 3, that means hitting the green in 1 stroke, par 4 is two strokes, par 5 is 3 strokes. Simple enough.
Greens In Regulation is one of the few traditional statistics that correlates well with score. Unlike fairways, it is almost certain that if you hit more greens you will score lower. However, when you miss greens, it is not always clear what you could have done differently or improved on to hit the green. In some cases, you will miss a green because your tee shot put you in a poor position (behind a tree, in a penalty, etc). Sometimes you will miss a green due to a poor iron shot while sitting in the middle of the fairway in perfect position. And lastly, you could miss a green because you hit a poor short game shot out of a greenside bunker on a par 5 or similar situation.
Knowing why you tend to miss greens is the first step to hitting more of them. Luckily, PAR Golf does that analysis for you in the Summary tab under Greens in Regulation.
Once you've used the above graphic in summary to identify your target area for improvement (Drives, Approach, Short Game)... then scroll down for the rest of the summary for more details on that area. Make sure to tap on the area you want to improve to bring up specific drilldowns into each category.
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