What does strokes gained mean?

If you have watched any professional golf on TV since 2011 you have surely heard of the Strokes Gained statistic. Stokes Gained includes Strokes Gained Total, Strokes Gained Putting, Strokes Gained Around-the-Green, Strokes Gained Approach-the-Green, and Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee. Following the introduction of Strokes Gained Putting in 2011 many people misunderstood the the stat so here is my quick summary and a link to a great pgatour.com article explaining Strokes Gained in more depth.

Basically the Strokes Gained statistic measures a players performance in a particular area against the average of the entire field of players. For example in Strokes Gained putting if you average 1.5 putts per green and the rest of the field averages 2 putts per green then your strokes gained is .5.

Strokes Gained is a more telling statistic because if I only know that player X averages 2 putts per green, that sounds okay but that information is useless because I don’t necessarily know how good or bad 2 strokes is. Once you introduce the average of the rest of the field, for example lets pick 1.8 Strokes per green, you have gained perspective that 2 strokes is less than average, in fact it’s -.2 Strokes Gained Putting. Now let’s just assume you’re looking at stats and you see player X’s Strokes Gained Putting is .3, you automatically know he is on average .3 strokes better around the greens than the average of all other players, pretty good!

For a more in depth explanation check out the PGA Tour.com article.

Strokes Gained: How it works