Tired of listening to generic golf tips that don’t seem to shave any strokes off your score? The single most effective way to understand your game and pinpoint exactly where you’re losing shots is by calculating your Strokes Gained. This article provides a clear, step-by-step guide to understanding the concept, calculating your own stats, and using that data to create a proven roadmap for improvement.
Forget your total score for a moment. While shooting 85 instead of 90 feels great, that final number doesn’t tell you how you got there. Did you drive it like a pro but putt like a beginner? Or did you miss every fairway but save yourself with a phenomenal short game? Most golfers are just guessing.
Strokes Gained cuts through the guesswork. It’s a performance metric, pioneered by Professor Mark Broadie, that compares every single shot you hit to a benchmark - typically, the performance of an average PGA Tour professional. It measures the quality of your shot, not just the outcome. For the first time, you can put a number on how much a specific shot helped or hurt your score relative to the best players.
The entire system is built around a single, powerful question: From this exact spot (distance and lie), how many strokes does it take an average tour pro to get the ball in the hole?
Let’s use a simple example on the putting green:
This same logic applies to every shot on the course. A 280-yard drive that finishes in the fairway is objectively better than a 250-yard drive into the rough, and Strokes Gained quantifies exactly how much better it was by calculating how many fewer strokes you’re expected to take on your next shot.
Now that you grasp the concept, the math itself is surprisingly straightforward. You don’t need an advanced degree to figure it out, you just need to follow a simple formula for every shot you hit.
Strokes Gained = (Starting Strokes Value) - (Ending Strokes Value) - 1
Let's break down each element:
Imagine you're standing in the fairway, 160 yards from the hole. Let's calculate the Strokes Gained for your approach shot.
SG = 3.01 (Start) - 1.86 (End) - 1 (Your Shot)SG = +0.15 On that single approach shot, you were 0.15 strokes better than an average PGA Tour pro. This instantly tells you that your approach game was working on this shot, offering much more valuable feedback than just saying "I hit a good shot."
Ready to try this yourself? Calculating your own Strokes Gained is a fantastic way to get an honest assessment of your game. It takes a little setup, but the payoff in understanding is massive. Here’s a step-by-step guide.
This is the foundational element. You need a chart that tells you the "strokes to hole out" value from different distances and lies. While the official PGA Tour data isn't easily public, many simplified versions are available online that will work perfectly for amateur analysis. A simple search for "Strokes Gained benchmark chart" will give you what you need. Print one out or save it to your phone.
Your chart will look something like this (these are illustrative values):
This is the most diligent part of the process. For every single shot in your round, you need to record two key pieces of information:
You can use a small notepad, a note-taking app on your phone, or a GPS watch that tracks shot distances. Be as precise as you can. "About 150 from the middle" is better than nothing, but laser rangefinders are your best friend here.
After your round, it's time to put your data into a spreadsheet (like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel). This is where the magic happens.
Set up columns like this:
Hole | Shot | Start Dist. | Start Lie | End Dist. | End Lie | Start Val. | End Val. | Strokes Gained
Use your benchmark chart to manually find the "Start Value" and "End Value" for each shot you recorded. Then, use the formula Start Val - End Val - 1 to calculate the SG for each shot. For advanced spreadsheet users, you can use a VLOOKUP function to make this automatic.
Once you’ve calculated the SG for every shot, the final step is to categorize them. The four standard categories are:
Now, simply sum up the SG for each category. After just one round, you might find something enlightening:
Bingo. This player has an obvious weakness with their approach shots and putting, even though their driving is actually helping them play better than their final score suggests. The guesswork is gone.
Having the data is one thing, using it to improve is the goal. Your Strokes Gained breakdown is a personalized roadmap for intelligent practice. It tells you where to invest your valuable time.
Think back to that sample result above (SG:APP = -3.5). This player no longer needs to wonder what to practice. He doesn't need to spend hours banging drivers, which is already a strength. His path to a lower score goes directly through improving his iron play and putting.
Here's how to turn your data into action:
Strokes Gained analytics is more than just-nerding out on stats, it’s a powerful tool that transforms the way you see your game by providing you with an honest diagnosis of where your strengths and weaknesses truly lie. By putting in a little work to track your shots and compare them to a benchmark, you can create a direct, data-driven plan for improvement that’s built specifically for you.
While calculating all of this yourself is hugely insightful, ourgoal with Caddie AI is to bring this same level of strategic thinking directly to you on the course, without the spreadsheets. Our app is designed to act as your on-demand golf expert, helping you make the smart, high-percentage play in any situation by analyzing the variables for you in real time. It's about taking the guesswork out of your strategy, so you can stand over every shot with the confidence that you’re making the right decision.
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