What is the Strokes Gained Statistics?

Strokes Gained is a powerful approach to golf game analysis, originally developed by Columbia Business School professor Mark Broadie and introduced in his book Every Shot Counts.

Instead of looking only at your final score, Strokes Gained (SG) measures every shot you hit against a benchmark: what an "average" player would have been expected to do from the same position on the course. If you hit a great drive that leaves you closer to the hole than expected, you gain strokes. If you chunk a chip into a bunker or miss a short putt, you lose strokes.

By adding those gains and losses across a round (or across an entire season) Strokes Gained creates a precise picture of where your game is helping your scores and where it's costing you strokes. The real value of SG is that it doesn't just tell you what happened, it tells you how much it mattered.

Golf Pad uses PGA Tour data to calculate Strokes Gained and also lets you compare your performance against different skill levels using a baseline selector. You can now choose to compare your game against:

1. PGA Tour players
2. Scratch golfers
3. 10-handicap golfers
4. 20-handicap golfers

Golf Pad GPS includes an automatic Strokes Gained calculator that tracks the impact of every shot throughout your round and organizes your performance into key categories:

• Off the Tee — how well your drives set up the rest of the hole
• Layups — strategic positioning shots where you're not going for the green
• Approach — iron shots and approaches into the green
• Around the Green — chips, pitches, and bunker shots near the green
• Putting — performance on the greens relative to expected outcomes