Stroke Saver: Understanding What Strokes Gained Means To Your Game

It’s the hot new stat on tour, strokes gained. Gone are things like, “How many putts did you have?” and, “What’s your driving distance?” It’s now all about those microscopic numbers in four easy to break down categories. The cool part, the strokes gained system is the perfect tool for breaking down what went wrong with your round and how to fix it for the next time. The implementation of ShotLink, the real-time scoring system that the PGA is using to track player’s progress has made the SG data very easy capture and process. The results are bundled in to one neat little package that consists of 4 microscopic numbers.

First on the list is tee shots. The tee shot category is measured by taking the player’s performance off the tee on all par 4’s and 5’s on the course. The better the drive’s position, the higher the score will be. Averaging these out, you get a number for the round. As you can see, my strokes gained for my last two rounds is basically even, or one drive was equal to one stroke. My drives weren’t good enough to help me gain momentum, but they weren’t poor enough to cost me much. Next up was the approach shot data. The data for this category includes any shots that are not from the tee on par 4 and par 5 holes, as well as any par 3 tee shots. Again, even though I’m in the positive numbers here, it hasn’t been good enough to drive me up in to the positive numbers.

Moving right along to the final two stats, we have the short game shots, which are any shots inside 30 yards, and putting, which is obviously shots taken on the green. The short game shots, or officially the “around-the-green” shots, are a measure of short wedge play and chipping/pitching to the hole. The goal with this stat is to bring the old addage of “up and down” back into play. The more chip and one putts you get, the higher your short game stats will be.  Finally, there’s the most measurable stat, and the oldest, putting. Putting is measured based on a sliding scale of distance. If you are one to three feet  away, the goal is 100% one putts. AS yo move out to 5 feet, you want to be better than 75% accurate with your one putts. 7 feet takes you down to half your putts being one putts. At 10 feet, only 40% of your putts will drop in one shot. From there, you start drifting into the lucky range and start measuring two putts as the norm.

As far as my performance goes, I’m pretty much shooting around a flat line in all the categories. My short game is the farthest off of zero, but for the most part, my game has been sound, just not good. Looking at the averages over 18 holes, my last round was 5 strokes higher than the one before it. The 5 strokes look easy to account for when you compare the numbers.

8/21 - Stats
Driving SG: - 0.09
Approach SG: + 0.05
Short Game SG: - 0.14
Putting SG: - 0.10
9/11 - Stats
Driving SG: - 0.08
Approach SG: - 0.04
Short Game SG: - 0.27
Putting SG: - 0.19

With a basic breakdown, driving was flat, approaches were .09 lower, short game was .13 lower and putting was .09 lower. That equals 1.62 strokes in my approach shots, 2.34 strokes in my short game and 1.62 strokes in my putting. Add that up it’s 5.58 strokes or – drum roll please – the difference between a 74 and a 79… I’m not sure how they put together this formula to work so well, but I believe this is how I will be measuring my progress from now on. The GolfPad Premium Service includes the full breakdown of stats and my Golf Tags make it easy to track all the way around the course.  Here is an image of how GolfPad presents the data and what it means.

The par 5 fourteenth hole during my great 74 on August 21st was a rough one for me. The “gold” shots above were shots that were below average. As you can see, I only managed to hit my drive 248 yards, which was one of my shorter drives of the day. On top of the short distance, I also found the fairway bunker. This makes the shot go from “white” which is ok, to “orange” which is below average. If the distance was shorter or I had found the trees or water, the shot would get labeled red, or very poor. The 3 wood from the bunker wasn’t a great shot, but it didn’t penalize me to the point of being a poor shot either. The bright orange wedge, that one that flew 162 yards and blew the green by 30 yards? Well that’s a borderline “very poor” shot given the location I was hitting from. I followed that up with the 30 yard pitch that just didn’t get me close enough to sink the putt. Overall, it was a hole that I lost 1.48 strokes on.

On a happier note, we had the par 3 eighth hole. My dark green tee shot helps me see that this was a really strong shot into the hole. that was followed by a one putt for birdie and a pickup of 1.15 shots on this hole. That makes the playing average of this hole 3.15, or just over par. That means for every 1 birdie, there are 18 pars and 5 bogeys. Therefore the green score on this hole is a very solid score.
By having more post round data – note: this is not something to worry about while you are playing, remember too much information can be deadly during a round – you can analyze your playing tendencies and work on those between rounds. Right now, my play is pretty much, for lack of a better term, average. I need to brush up on my short game a touch and maybe my driving accuracy, but honestly, shooting a flat zero against the PGA Tour average isn’t doing all that bad in my book.
For more information on the Strokes Gained System, visit the PGA Tour website.
For additional information on the GolfPad system, read my review here.