Points, rebounds, touchdowns… there’s a lot of stats out there in the sports world. Golf is no different - pars per round, driving distance, fairways in regulation. However there is one stat that stands above the rest, strokes gained. You've probably heard it in a PGA Tour broadcast or have seen it tweeted by some golf nerds, but there's a really good reason people have pushed this stat to the forefront of the golf game. Let's dig in.

What is strokes gained?

Strokes gained is a measure the number of strokes you improve or worsen against the ‘field’. Strokes gained can be calculated for every single shot, hole, and round. Typically for the PGA Tour you'll see it calculated for an entire round and for the entire tournament.

The ‘field’ in the case of professional golfers is the entire PGA Tour or LIV Tour. This means that strokes gained is a relative measurement, and to calculate the statistic you must always compare against some baselines group of golfers. This could be your Saturday morning foursome, your college team, or all NCAA Division I golfers. It doesn’t matter which group you choose to compare against, but whatever number is calculated for strokes gained, remember it is always relative to the ‘field’ you choose.

An example strokes gained calculation

Let's say you've just hit your tee shot on a par 4 into the fairway, and you've got 150 yards to the pin. We want to calculate the 'strokes gained' for your approach shot at the green. Another way to think of it, we want to calculate how much better or worse this particular approach shot is versus the field.

In this example let's say that the 'field' averages 2.9 strokes to finish the hole from 150 yards in the fairway.

You take your approach shot, and you hit the green, and you're left with a 20 foot putt for birdie.

For a 20 foot putt, the 'field' averages 1.85 strokes to finish the hole.

Now for the strokes gained calculation for the approach shot is as follows:

Strokes Gained = Current Position Strokes to Finish the Hole - Finish Position Strokes to Finish the Hole - 1

So in this scenario, plugging our numbers in you would come up with Strokes Gained = 2.9 - 1.85 - 1 = 0.05. In this example, you’d say you’ve gained 0.05 shots on the field with this approach shot. So what does this mean in terms of the quality of your shot? It means you’ve just hit a slightly better than average approach shot than the field is currently performing.

Now, if you continue on and calculate the strokes gained for all of your shots you could see on a per-round basis just how well each facet of your game is performing compared to the field. If only there was a great tool to enter in this info for strokes gained to be calculated automatically, this is the perfect use case for Caddy Stats!

Who created strokes gained?

Short answer - Mark Broadie. He is a Columbia Business School professor who took the principles he learned in quantitative finance and applied them to golf. You can check out his book here at this link.

He covers the origins and his creation of strokes gained along with so many exciting examples about how looks aren't always what they appear for any given round, and you need strokes gained to truly back up how you're performing. He was able to utilize the PGA Tour ShotLink system for tracking shot information (wouldn't it be awesome if we all had that?). It's a great read - go check it out!

Who benefits from tracking strokes gained?

Any golfer! Ever heard the saying you can only improve what you measure? Sure, you could measure your score every day and use that as your feedback loop, but strokes gained gives you INCREDIBLY more depth into each aspect of your game, that you’ll very quickly know what to practice. After tracking your shots, you may be incredibly surprised to know how good (or bad) you actually are at the different facets of the game!

Putting felt off lately? Go check your strokes gained putting and see if the data matches what you’re feeling. Then you can confidently approach your next practice session, pre-round range session, and next full round with confidence on where exactly you need to improve.

Caddy Stats gives a precise overview of each facet of your game, at any given yardage or lie type.

How can I track strokes gained?

We strongly believe that Caddy Stats as the best option because we are fast, easy to use, fairly priced, and give great comparison tools for teams and individual coaches to analyze all of their players. We especially believe in supporting junior, high school, and collegiate golfers on the quest to improve, but our platform is built for every type of golfer out there.

That being said there’s lot of solid services out there if we’re not your flavor. No hard feelings!

There’s DECADE golf, which offers some advanced course management tactics to apply to the course.

Arccos golf that comes with sensors equipped to your clubs to automatically track your shots.

Clippd is another service that also provides the live scoring platform for collegiate golf.

Go give them a shot if you're interested, we love to see golfers get better