What strokes gained measures and what it doesn't
Strokes gained is the cleanest tool you can put on a golfer's data. It's also the easiest thing to overstate. This is a short post about what it actually tells you, and where it stays silent.
The premise
Strokes gained takes every shot you hit and compares it to a benchmark distribution: how many strokes a reference player needs, on average, to hole out from that exact lie and distance. If you started from 165 yards in the fairway and finished 12 feet from the pin, you can look up how many strokes a benchmark player needs from 165 fairway (call it 2.95) versus 12 feet (call it 1.78). Your one swing moved you from 2.95 expected strokes to 1.78 expected strokes. You “gained” 0.17 strokes against the benchmark on that shot.
Add up every shot you hit during a round, and you get a single number for the day: strokes gained on the tee, strokes gained on the approach, strokes gained around the green, strokes gained putting. Mark Broadie published the canonical baseline tables in Every Shot Counts and refined them in Broadie 2011. The PGA Tour adopted the framework in 2014. You’re now reading about it on a golf app.
What it measures cleanly
The distance and lie quality of every shot. Strokes gained is brutally honest about a wedge from 80 yards that ends up in a bunker. The benchmark says you should have a much shorter putt. You don’t. Negative SG.
The gap between you and a reference player. PGA Tour averages. Scratch. A 5-handicap. Pick a benchmark and SG tells you how much worse (or better) you are at that exact moment in the round.
Where the strokes leak. Aggregate over twenty rounds and the four sub-categories tell you a story. “I lose 1.2 strokes per round to the field on approach shots from 150-175.” That’s an actionable sentence. It says practice this distance.
Improvement over time. The slope of your SG line is a much truer signal than the slope of your handicap. Handicap is a delayed, allowance-clouded, format-aware index. SG is a direct shot-quality measurement against a fixed benchmark.
What it doesn’t measure
Course conditions on the day. SG benchmarks are averages across thousands of rounds in every condition. The benchmark from 165 fairway in a 25 km/h wind is the same number as the benchmark from 165 fairway in still air. Your shot quality looks worse on a windy day even if your swing was identical.
Whether you played the right shot. SG measures execution against a benchmark distribution, not strategy. The benchmark assumes you played the smart shot. If your 165-fairway swing was a low-percentage flag-hunt into a tucked pin, and the smart play was to aim 20 feet right and accept a 35-foot putt, SG will tell you the execution was great because you stuck it close. It won’t tell you the decision was bad.
Risk you took on. Two players can have identical SG-tee numbers. One bombs driver and lands in the fairway; the other hits irons short of the bunkers. SG doesn’t know about the bunker.
Mental state. SG doesn’t know you three-putted because you were thinking about your tee time on Sunday.
The shot you intended. A pull-hook 30 yards left of target that gets a kick off a cart path and ends up on the green is a great SG shot. The data doesn’t care.
How we present it
In the app, every shot on every hole carries a SG annotation when we have enough information to compute one (lie classified, distance known, finish known). The hole preview overlays your launch-monitor dispersion against the polygon-classified surface and shows you the expected SG of each candidate target. Useful before you swing.
In the stats screen, SG is broken into the four categories and a per-distance breakdown. The Focus this Week card picks your worst-leverage category and points you at it.
We tier the baselines by handicap. A scratch benchmark is unfair to a 20-handicap; a 20-handicap benchmark is unfair to a scratch player. The internal table scales between Broadie’s scratch baseline and aggregate-amateur data from Shot Scope, Arccos, and the Foy Golf Academy putting study.
The honest closing
Strokes gained isn’t the answer. It’s a better question.
It tells you where the strokes go. It doesn’t tell you why. The why is a coach’s job, or a launch monitor’s job, or a slow afternoon at the range studying one specific 50-yard pitch. SG is the cheapest, most honest way to find the question worth asking next.
Use it to study, not to brag.