the strokes gained statistic: explained.

What is strokes gained?

Golfers have reliably poor instincts for how they are currently performing, and even poorer instincts for what standard they should be compared to. This is partly because golf is difficult to analyze. Sometimes a good strategy goes wrong. Other times a poor strategy pays off. The relatively arbitrary notion of "par" may further distort golfers expectations of what a good score is or what a meaningful standard of comparison might be. I believe many golfers want to put in the work to improve, but how to direct their energy can be tough to pin down.

If golfers want to shoot lower scores, a more specific analysis is required. The ability to accurately measure your current abilities and compare them to some meaningful standard of performance is a universal pre-requisite for improvement in anything. Golf is no different. As it turns out, there is a world of useful information hiding behind the score you ultimately post at the end of your round. Today, technologies exist that have made gathering and analyzing this information much easier. This is the foundation of a data driven improvement plan.

Your final score is a reflection of several different golfing skills. Driving, approach shots, chipping, bunker play, and putting. It is crucial to measure (not guess) how you perform in each of these categories. It is also important to understand that not all of these categories contribute to your final score equally. So how can you accurately measure your current ability in each category and which of all these categories contributes the most to your final score? If you knew the answers to these questions, you might allocate your precious practice time more efficiently, giving you a bigger return on your time investment. The answer for how to budget your practice time most effectively lies in the statistic of strokes gained.

The concept of strokes gained was developed by a Columbia Business School professor named Mark Brodie. He wrote a book explaining the strokes gained statistic called Every Shot Counts. This is perhaps the most important golf book ever written. If you are a golfer that takes your improvement seriously, the information in this book is basically table stakes for understanding how to go about improving your scores. Tragically, most golfers I've met have never heard of it.

Strokes gained can be illustrated by considering the scenario of an 8 foot putt on the PGA tour. On tour, an 8 foot putt has a 50% make percentage (and a 50% miss percentage) meaning that half of the field will make the 8 footer, and half will miss. To state this another way, the average number of strokes the PGA tour field will take to hole out from 8 feet is 1.5 strokes. (Half of the field will 2 putt, half will 1 putt.) That means that if a tour pro makes an 8 footer, they have gained 0.5 strokes to the average player in the field. Conversely, if a tour pro misses an 8 footer, they have lost 0.5 strokes to the average player in the field.

The ultimate goal of golf is a hole out. Therefore, strokes gained is measuring your progress toward this goal not in terms of "distance from the hole" but in terms of "the average number of strokes remaining to hole out." This is a much more informative way to measure progress because it quantifies the value of each shot spent during a round. We all know if you have a 100 yard shot from the fairway and you hit it in the bunker, that’s a “bad” shot. We also know that if you have a 150 yard shot from the rough and you hit it 15 feet from the hole, it is a “good” shot. But just how good are good shots and how bad are bad ones? Strokes gained is a way of assigning a numerical value to the relative “goodness” or “badness” of each shot you take during a round. The definition of strokes gained given by Brodie is: “For any golf shot, the strokes gained is the decrease in the average number of strokes to hole out, minus one to account for the stroke taken."

Returning to our 8 foot putting example, the golfer that sinks the putt in one stroke starts in one position and finishes in another position as follows:

START Position 1 (8 feet away): average strokes to hole out = 1.5

FINISH Position 2 (in the hole): average strokes to hole out = 0

The difference in the average number of strokes to hole out between these 2 positions is 1.5 strokes. So the golfer was able to move the ball 1.5 strokes closer to the ultimate goal of a hole out, but they only spent 1 stroke in doing so. Therefore the net gain is 0.5 strokes. Sadly, the golfer that 2 putts from 8 feet is losing approximately 0.5 strokes to the field. This same formula can be applied to all shots from all distances and with consideration for different lies including fairway/rough/sand.

Let's take our formula and apply it to the play of an entire golf hole calculating the strokes gained from each individual shot. I'm going to use PGA tour statistics and a local example of hole number 1 at beautiful Wine Valley Golf Club. If a tour player were to tee off from the very back tee, the distance to the middle of the green is about 420 yards. The average number of strokes to hole out from that distance off the tee on the PGA tour is 4.02 strokes.

TEE SHOT:

Let’s assume that a tour professional hits a tee shot of 300 yards into the middle of the fairway to a position that is 120 yards from the middle of the green. This means that the tee shot moved the ball as follows:

START: Position 1 (420 yards away) average strokes to hole out = 4.02

FINISH: Position 2 (120 yards away) average strokes to hole out = 2.85

The difference in the average number of strokes to hole out between these 2 positions is 1.17 strokes. The golfer was able to move the ball 1.17 strokes closer to a hole out, but spent only 1 stroke in doing so. Therefore the net strokes gained for the tee shot is 0.17 strokes.

APPROACH SHOT:

From the middle of the fairway, let’s say our tour pro hits an approach shot that finishes 15 feet from the hole on the green. The average number of strokes to hole out from this distance on the green is 1.78 strokes. This means the approach shot moved the ball as follows:

START Position 1 (120 yards away): Average number of strokes to hole out = 2.85

FINISH Position 2 (15 feet away): Average number of strokes to hole out = 1.78

The difference in average number of strokes to hole out between these 2 positions is 1.07 strokes. The golfer was able to move the ball 1.07 strokes closer to a hole out and spent only one stroke in doing so. Therefore the net strokes gained for the approach shot is 0.07 strokes.

FIRST PUTT:

Next let’s say our tour pro putts the ball from 15 feet away to 2 feet away. This means that the first putt moved the ball as follows:

START Position 1 (15 feet away): Average number of strokes to hole out = 1.78

FINISH Position 2 (2 feet away): Average number of strokes to hole out = 1.01

The difference in average number of strokes to hole out between these 2 positions is 0.77 strokes. The golfer was able to move the ball 0.77 strokes closer to a hole out and spent one stroke in doing so. Therefore the net strokes gained (loss) for the first putt is -0.23 strokes.

SECOND PUTT:

Of course, our tour pro does not miss 2 footers. The last stroke on this hole moves the ball as follows:

START Position 1 (2 feet away): Average number of strokes to hole out = 1.01

FINISH Position 2 (0 feet away): Average number of strokes to hole out = 0

The difference in average number of strokes to hole out between these 2 positions is 1.01 strokes. The golfer was able to move the ball 1.01 strokes closer to a hole out and spent one stroke in doing so. Therefore the net strokes gained for the second putt is 0.01 strokes.

How many strokes did the pro gain vs. the field for all the shots on this hole?

Tee Shot: +0.17

Approach Shot: +0.07

First Putt: -0.23

Second Putt: +0.01

Total Strokes Gained: 0.02

Why is this useful?

measuring your ability in each golf skill

Now that you understand the concept of strokes gained, how can this information be useful in helping guide improvement? Instead of calculating strokes gained for each individual hole, a more informative approach would be to add up all the strokes gained for a given round, or series of rounds, for each golf skill.

Let’s consider driving on its own and imagine our tour professional goes on to gain 0.17 strokes per tee shot for the rest of his round at Wine Valley. 0.17 strokes may not seem like a lot, but Wine Valley has 13 par 4’s and par 5’s. (Tee shots on par 3’s count as approach shots). This means that the pro gains 0.17 x 13 = 2.21 strokes vs. the field average from his driving alone this round. This is an enormous gain. For a professional, adding this up over the course of a 4 round tournament means that he would be gaining 8.84 shots on the field from driving.

The first insight that strokes gained provides is a quantifiable measurement of your abilities in each area of golf skill.

If you knew in which skill areas you were gaining/losing strokes compared to other golfers this would absolutely remove any uncertainty about what areas of your game need the most work. There are now ways to gather your data and services that can compare you to any other relative skill level, not just the PGA tour. Would you be interested to know where you stack up in terms of strokes gained compared to other golfers of your same handicap? It can be done. Curious what it would take for you to become a scratch golfer? You can now see exactly how many strokes you are losing and in exactly which skill areas you are losing them relative to scratch. By tracking your strokes gained in each skill, you now have a true measure of where you stand in each area. Anything short of this is guesswork.

not all golf skills contribute equally

All golf skills are important, but not all contribute equally to strokes gained. In his book “Every Shot Counts” Brodie details the statistical reasons that golf skills are not created equal. Such a discussion is beyond the scope of this post but I do recommend you read the book to understand this in depth. For the purpose of this discussion I will simply summarize his findings.

Below is the percentage contribution to total strokes gained from each golf skill:

Driving: 38%

Approach Shots: 40%

Short Game (All shots inside 100 yards): 17%

Putting: 15%

Based on this information, if you want to gain the most strokes compared to other golfers, your time is best spent on driving and approach shots. In other words, you stand to gain far more strokes by improving your driving and approach shots than by practicing ANY shot inside 100 yards, including all putts.

The second insight strokes gained provides is which golf skills contribute most to total strokes gained.

Improving driving distance specifically can be transformative because hitting the ball further off the tee doesn’t just improve your strokes gained driving, it positions you closer to the green which positively impacts your approach shots as well. Let’s imagine you’ve had a fitness and biomechanics evaluation with Iconic Motion and you’ve been working on your flexibility, strength and power. After lots of hard work, you manage to gain 20 yards of driving distance. Not only will you have shorter approach shots in terms of yardage, but you likely hit your irons further as well which means you are hitting all approach shots with shorter clubs and are likely to be far more accurate. There is a downstream, compound effect produced when you get more powerful overall. Longer drives take pressure off the approach game. Better approach shots take pressure off the short game and putting.

According to Brodie, “For pros, driving distance is more important than driving accuracy. For amateur golfers, driving distance is even more important for scoring than driving accuracy.”

Accuracy is important and there are some situational exceptions. But on the whole, it is nearly impossible to overstate the importance of distance, especially for amateurs.

Conclusion

By now it should be obvious that your improvement plan should be based on the insights provided by the strokes gained statistic. If you don't know about these concepts, your efforts may be misguided. Other legacy golf statistics like fairways hit, greens in regulation and putts per round tell you almost nothing about where you stand in each skill. Strokes gained is the gold standard for measuring golf performance.

If you do nothing else, devoting time to the long game will pay the most dividends. New equipment and technique changes can be excellent ways to improve the long game, but getting stronger and more powerful are the most effective and durable ways to improve the long game. If you are interested in how you can improve your fitness, I invite you to examine the services that Iconic Motion provides and perhaps set up a phone consultation.

Technology has also made it quite simple to keep track of your own strokes gained numbers. I strongly recommend and use a system called Arccos. It connects to any smartphone using small sensors attached to any golf club grip. They also sell grips with the sensors built in. This system uses strokes gained statistics to provide a wealth of useful information about where you are gaining or losing strokes. You can compare yourself with other golfers of your same handicap, or you can compare yourself with other handicaps. Use the code ICONICMOTION to get 10% off your purchase of an Arccos system. Doing so helps to support Iconic Motion Golf.

www.arccosgolf.com

I know I have mentioned this already, but I highly recommend purchasing and reading the book “Every Shot Counts” by Mark Brodie. All the concepts presented above are discussed in even greater detail and Brodie provides some further insights from strokes gained including how to apply strokes gained to course management scenarios. His book is available pretty much anywhere books are sold.

Thank you for reading. Go get powerful and gain strokes!