THE bare figures on a scorecard often fail to tell the true story.

There is the tale, for example, of the club player at Coombe Wood,

Surrey, whose errant approach to the sixteenth green fell down the

vertical exhaust of a tractor. A few moments later, after compression

built up, the ball shot back out like a rocket and came to rest close to

the pin.

The figure 3 on the card, if that is indeed what it was, is a very

poor official record of that incident.

In the professional game, there has long been recognition that the

bare scores per hole are insufficient for those in search of the

absolute truth. So we have weekly outpourings of stroke averages (leader

Colin Montgomerie 70.00), driving accuracy (John Bland 93.75% fairways

hit), sand saves (Peter Fowler 55.64%), birdies (Costantino Rocca 278),

eagles (Peter Baker, Peter Mitchell, Darren Clarke 12), and so on.

Interestingly, there has been a recent change in the putting stats.

Previously, listings were in putts per round, but as that tended to

throw up leaders who had low ratings in the greens-in-regulation

category, and therefore were always more likely to have their first

putts from much closer range, the European Tour have changed that aspect

to ''putts per green in regulation.''

Those at the top, who before would have had figures of around 28 per

round, now have averages to three decimal points (Michael Campbell top

on 1.716 per green).

Great stuff -- if you like stats.

How, then, can we club golfers analyse our scores? In a roundabout way

-- as a result of so far fruitless attempts to discover the precise

difference between 90 and 100 compression balls -- a copy of ''Golf: the

Scientific Way,'' edited by Alastair Cochran, has come into my

possession.

The complicated data on ball performances discouraged any further

research into compression, but an article by American golf analyst, Dr

Lucius Riccio, entitled ''What it takes to break 80,'' caught the

attention instead.

Isn't that, after all, the realistic ambition of the majority of club

golfers?

Having analysed the scores of 100 golfers of widely ranging ability

averaging eight rounds each -- a total of some 60,000 shots -- he has

come up with a formula which he calls, after himself, ''Riccio's Rule.''

This rule states: score equals 95 minus two times the number of greens

hit in regulation (GIR). Therefore, you must have eight GIRs to break 80

(95 minus two times eight equals 79). One might imagine that this

formula would vary according to standard scratch score, but he does not

say so, and I am frightened to ask.

GIR, though, he found, had the highest correlation with score. With

1.0 a perfect match GIR tallied 0.93, followed by distance the ball is

hit (0.64), number of badly-hit shots (0.63), iron-club accuracy (0.54),

and putting (also 0.54).

Riccio notes that the often-used excuse for a poor score, putting, is

an illusion: ''This study indicates that if a professional did the

putting for a golfer who shoots 90, his score would almost never go

below 80. At most, he may pick up four strokes, most likely one to

three.''

Accepting, then, that Riccio's Rule is correct -- and the European

Tour change in relating putting to GIR hints that it might be -- the

position is thus: If you have more GIRs than required for your score

then your short game needs attention -- unless there were a lot of fluke

shots via a tractor exhaust; if less, then your full swing is worse than

it should be for your scoring ability.

Something, perhaps, to mull over next time you step into a bath to

replay your last round in your head. Just think, 13 GIRs equals a score

of 69, but let's not get carried away.

On the other hand, you may prefer to head for the bar, forget all

about it, and tell Riccio what he can do with his rule.