Understanding “Strokes Gained” – How it Works and Why You Should Care

A statistical revolution has taken over in nearly every sport over the last decade or so.

Traditional concepts and ideas have been questioned by modern statistics, and players and teams have changed the way they approach their game.

This has happened most notably in baseball, but it is also seen in football, basketball, and yes – golf.

In this article, we’d like to talk about perhaps the biggest statistical development in golf in recent years, and that is the “strokes gained” statistic.

We will review what this measure is and why you should pay attention to it for your game. Even if you don’t consider yourself a statistics lover, there is still something to be learned from this discussion.

Let’s get started!

The Problem with Traditional Golf Stats

Statistics have been used in golf for generations. The idea of keeping track of a player’s performance by monitoring stats is not new, but the traditional stats that golfers used to use didn’t capture much about the true underlying performance of the player.

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With the Strokes Gained approach, these updated statistics are better able to tell the story of what the player is doing well, and where he or she could stand to improve.

Let’s take the example of Total Putts as a traditional, but flawed, golf statistic…

If you track how many putts it takes you to complete a round of golf, you are almost inevitably going to get a misleading view of your putting performance. Consider the two rounds below:

• Player A hits 16 greens in regulation and requires 30 putts to complete 18 holes
• Player B hits just 6 greens in regulation, and finishes the round with only 24 putts

So, Player B performed much better on the greens than Player A, correct?

Not so fast.

Despite using six fewer putts over 18 holes, it’s entirely possible – likely, even – that Player A was the better putter.

Here’s the thing – when you hit a green in regulation, your ball is probably farther from the hole than when you miss the green and chip up toward the cup. So, Player A likely had plenty of long putts on those 16 greens that were hit in regulation.

30 putts is actually pretty good for hitting 16 greens, as it means there were a few birdies made along the way.

As you can see, Total Putts is a statistic that needs more context to tell any kind of meaningful story. The same is true for some of the other classic golf stats, like Fairways Hit, Greens Hit, and others.

How Strokes Gained Works

While the math can get a little complicated, the idea behind Strokes Gained is very simple – assign a stroke value to each individual shot during a round of golf.

A good shot will cause a player to gain ground on the field, while a poor shot will lose ground.

For the math to work, the PGA Tour had to start by calculating a baseline expected strokes number for players from every position on the course. This was done by aggregating ShotLink data that had been collected during play on the Tour.

Ultimate Strokes Gained Reference Chart

Approach Shot Version pic.twitter.com/KuvMWpEYDH

— Lou Stagner (Golf Stat Pro) (@LouStagner) March 23, 2020

As a player moves through a hole, the way their shots impact the expected shots remaining on that hole will determine whether they are gaining or losing strokes.

Let’s do a quick example to help you get your head around this concept:

On the PGA Tour, it takes – on average – 2.92 strokes for a player to finish a hole when they are 150-yards out in the fairway. So, if a player is sitting in the fairway facing a 150-yard approach shot, it is expected that they will need 2.92 strokes to get the ball into the hole.

Let’s say that player hits the 150-yard approach shot and sticks it just a foot from the cup. This is a great shot, of course, and nearly a sure birdie. The expected number of putts from one foot is just 1.001, as those short putts will almost always be made.

Now, it’s just a matter of some simple math to determine how many strokes were gained by that approach.

Starting with 2.92 strokes expected, we subtract one for actually playing the approach. Now, we are at 1.92, and we need to subtract the 1.001 for the upcoming putt. That leaves the total at .9119, which is the number of strokes gained by the accurate shot into the green.

This same concept can be applied to every shot played during a round of golf. When the totals are all added and subtracted from the good and bad shots, you’ll be left with a total Strokes Gained number for the round as a whole.

How This Applies to Your Game

The Strokes Gained statistic has been revolutionary on the Tour, but there is only one problem when it comes to your game – you don’t play on the PGA Tour. So, no, it’s not realistic to use Strokes Gained in your game the same way those on Tour use it, but you can still apply the lessons learned through this stat to make your game better.

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As you watch golf or track the scores online, pay attention to Strokes Gained and how it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of various players.

What can you learn?

For example, you might find that the penalty in terms of expected strokes to finish a hole for missing the fairway is not as significant as you once thought. Knowing that the rough doesn’t hurt you that much in most cases, and knowing that you can gain strokes through hitting long drives, you might decide to use your driver more aggressively.

This has been one impact of this data on the PGA Tour, and you could apply it the same way in your game.

Whether you use Strokes Gained to think about your own style of play, or you just enjoy tracking it when watching the pros, this interesting approach to golf statistics has certainly made a lasting mark on the game.