Strokes Gained Analytics

In our first station, we explored the mathematical relationship between your handicap and how much your total score varies from day to day. To consistently break 90, you must shrink that variance. But how do you know exactly which parts of your game are causing the problem? To find out, we use a system called Strokes Gained analytics.

Moving Beyond Traditional Golf Stats

For decades, golfers tracked their progress using basic numbers like "Fairways Hit," "Greens in Regulation," and "Putts per Round." These traditional stats are deeply flawed because they lack context.

Imagine you miss a fairway by two feet, leaving your ball sitting nicely in the light rough with a clear view of the flag. Now imagine you slice your drive 50 yards deep into a dense forest. Traditional stats record both of these drives as a "Missed Fairway." They treat a minor error and a catastrophic mistake as the exact same thing.

Similarly, "Putts per Round" can lie to you. If you chip the ball to one foot and tap it in, you only took one putt. But that was because of a great chip, not a great putt. Strokes Gained fixes this problem by measuring the actual quality of every single shot, isolating your performance from one swing to the next.

The Baseline of Expected Strokes

The foundation of Strokes Gained is a concept called "expected strokes." This is a benchmark number. It tells you how many strokes a specific type of golfer—like a scratch player or a typical 80-shooter—usually takes to finish the hole from a specific distance and lie.

Think of expected strokes like a financial budget for a road trip. If you plan to spend $400 on gas, and you find a cheaper route that only costs $350, you "gained" $50 against your budget. In golf, you are budgeting strokes.

Here is a simplified look at what an expected strokes table might look like for a scratch golfer:

Notice how the lie matters just as much as the distance. Being 150 yards away in the thick rough costs you nearly half a stroke more than being 150 yards away in the short grass of the fairway.

Calculating the Value of a Single Shot

To figure out if a shot was good or bad, you simply compare your starting expectation to your ending expectation. You want to see if your shot moved the ball closer to the hole faster than the benchmark predicts.

Let us walk through a concrete example. You are standing in the fairway, 150 yards from the hole. The table says your expected strokes from here is 2.80. You hit a terrible iron shot that lands in a greenside bunker, 20 yards from the hole. The expected strokes from that bunker is 2.40.

Your calculation is: 2.80 (Start) - 2.40 (End) - 1 (The shot you hit) = -0.60.

Because the result is negative, you lost 0.60 strokes on that single swing. Your shot was worse than the benchmark average. Over an 18-hole round, these fractions of a stroke add up quickly.

Categorizing Your Game to Break 90

Calculating every single shot gives you a massive pile of data. To make this data useful, you must group your shots into four main buckets:

• Off-the-Tee: All tee shots on par-4s and par-5s.
• Approach: All shots starting outside 30 yards from the green (excluding tee shots on par-4s and par-5s).
• Around-the-Green: All shots within 30 yards of the edge of the green, excluding putts.
• Putting: All shots taken with a putter on the putting surface.

By adding up your Strokes Gained in each bucket, you reveal your true performance deficiencies. You might feel like your driving is terrible, but the math might show you are actually losing four strokes a round on your approach shots.

Once you identify exactly where you are bleeding strokes, you can stop guessing. You can tailor your practice sessions to fix your actual weaknesses. Furthermore, knowing your statistical weak spots allows you to navigate the course more wisely. In our next station, "Probability in Shot Selection," we will explore how to use this knowledge to pick safer, smarter target lines when facing high-risk holes.

Key Terms

• Strokes Gained — A statistical metric that measures the quality of a golf shot by comparing it to a benchmark of expected strokes, isolating the performance of that specific swing.
• Expected Strokes — The average number of strokes it takes a specific benchmark group of golfers to finish a hole from a given distance and lie.
• Performance Deficiency — A specific, measurable area of a player's game (such as putting or approach shots) where they consistently lose strokes compared to their target benchmark.