What is Strokes Gained? Golf's Best Statistic Explained

Strokes gained is the most useful statistic in professional golf. It answers a question traditional stats never could: on any given shot, did a player perform better or worse than the field would have from the same spot — and by exactly how much?

If you want to understand why analysts trust it, why broadcasters quote it, and why every serious golf model is built on it, this explainer covers the concept, the four categories, a worked example, and how to actually use it when researching a tournament.

The concept

Every position on a golf course has an expected number of strokes to hole out — a benchmark derived from millions of real shots by tour professionals. From the middle of the fairway 150 yards out, the average tour pro needs a little under three strokes to finish the hole. From eight feet on the green, roughly one and a half — because pros hole about half of their eight-footers.

Strokes gained compares each shot against that benchmark. Take the expected strokes from where the shot started, subtract the expected strokes from where it finished, and subtract one for the stroke played:

Strokes gained = (expected strokes before the shot) − (expected strokes after the shot) − 1

A shot that moves you further towards the hole than an average pro would manage gains strokes (a positive number). A poor one loses them (negative). Sum every shot in a round and you know precisely how much better or worse a player was than the benchmark — and, more to the point, where the difference came from.

Where it came from

The methodology was developed by Mark Broadie, a professor at Columbia Business School, from analysis of the PGA Tour's ShotLink system, which records the start and end position of every shot at Tour events. The Tour adopted strokes gained: putting as an official statistic in 2011; strokes gained: tee-to-green and total followed in 2014, the same year Broadie's book Every Shot Counts set out the full framework; and in 2016 the Tour split tee-to-green into today's familiar categories: off the tee, approach, and around the green.

The four categories

• Off the tee (SG: OTT) — all tee shots on par 4s and par 5s. Captures the combined value of distance and accuracy, rather than trading one off against the other.
• Approach (SG: APP) — shots into the green from outside roughly 30 yards (excluding tee shots on par 4s and 5s). For professionals this is consistently the biggest driver of scoring differences between players.
• Around the green (SG: ARG) — chips, pitches and bunker shots within roughly 30 yards of the green.
• Putting (SG: PUTT) — everything on the green, judged against make-rates from each distance.

The four categories sum to a player's total strokes gained against the field. That decomposition is the entire appeal: instead of "he shot 68", you get "he gained 2.1 on approach, 0.8 off the tee, lost 0.4 putting".

A worked example

Take a 420-yard par 4. Illustrative benchmark figures, rounded for clarity — not the Tour's exact baseline table:

• From the tee, expected strokes: 4.10.
• The player hits a 310-yard drive into the fairway, leaving a spot with an expected 2.75. Strokes gained: 4.10 − 2.75 − 1 = +0.35. A clearly better-than-average drive.
• The approach from 110 yards finishes 25 feet away, a position worth 1.90 expected strokes. Strokes gained: 2.75 − 1.90 − 1 = −0.15. Slightly worse than the average pro from there.
• The 25-foot putt drops. Strokes gained: 1.90 − 0 − 1 = +0.90. Pros rarely hole from 25 feet, so this putt gained nearly a full stroke.

Birdie three on a hole expected to take 4.10 — a total of +1.10, and the ledger tells you exactly how it was earned: a very good drive, a slightly loose approach, an excellent putt. Traditional stats would have recorded only "fairway hit, green in regulation, one putt" — true, and almost entirely uninformative.

Why it beats traditional stats

The older counting stats all suffer from the same flaw: they record what happened without the context of where.

• Putts per round rewards bad approach play. Miss greens all day, chip close and tap in, and your putting stats look magnificent. A player who hits every green thirty feet from the flag takes more putts while playing objectively better golf.
• Fairways hit treats a 320-yard drive in the first cut as a failure and a 250-yard poke down the middle as a success. The longer drive is usually worth more, and strokes gained prices that correctly.
• Greens in regulation counts a green hit from 60 feet the same as one hit to three feet. The difference between those two outcomes is most of the difference between an average pro and a great one.

Strokes gained fixes all of this with one consistent currency — strokes against the field — applied to every shot from every lie. It also allows fair comparison across weeks by adjusting for the strength of the field a player faced, which raw scoring averages cannot do.

How to use strokes gained when researching tournaments

For anyone assessing a field before an event, strokes gained is the foundation. Five practical habits:

1. Weight approach play most heavily. Among professionals, approach is the category that best separates strong weeks from weak ones and carries the most predictive signal. Recent, sustained gains on approach are the strongest single form indicator.

2. Trust categories over finishes. A player can finish 40th while striking it beautifully and putting horribly — or steal a top ten with one hot putting week. Putting is the most volatile category week to week; ball-striking (off the tee plus approach) is more repeatable. Back the ball-striker whose putter was cold rather than the putter whose ball-striking was.

3. Match categories to the course. Some venues punish wayward driving; others neutralise distance and turn the event into an approach and short-game examination. Reading which categories a course rewards — then finding the players who gain in exactly those — is the core of course-fit analysis.

4. Use an adequate sample. One round of strokes gained data is weather, mood and luck. Look at rolling windows — the last three, six and twelve months — before concluding anything about a player's current level.

5. Check the data source and its coverage. Full shot-level data exists mainly where ShotLink or equivalent tracking operates; for some tours and events, strokes gained figures are estimates built from less granular scoring data. Worth knowing when comparing players across circuits like the DP World Tour.

This is precisely how strokes gained sits inside our own process at ProPlace: field-strength-adjusted performance in, weighted by category and course fit, feeding the probability rankings we publish each week. The full methodology is on How We Pick, and every ranking we have issued — good weeks and bad — is logged on Performance. If you want to see how the numbers translate into finding mispriced players, start with Model vs Consensus: Finding Value on the PGA Tour; for how place probabilities turn analysis into sensible staking, see Each-Way Golf Betting Explained.

In one paragraph

Strokes gained measures every shot against what an average tour professional would do from the same spot, so a round becomes a precise ledger of where strokes were won and lost — driving, approach, short game, putting. It was developed by Mark Broadie from PGA Tour ShotLink data, adopted by the Tour from 2011, and has since become the shared language of golf analytics because it is the only mainstream statistic that measures the quality of golf rather than merely counting outcomes.

ProPlace is a golf research and statistical-analysis service — not a tipster or a bookmaker, and we do not accept stakes. Nothing here is betting advice.

18+ | BeGambleAware.org — Please gamble responsibly. Past performance is not a guide to future results.