Strokes Gained Analysis For Average Golfers

[Dave2512]

I input 9 holes from my last round I have posted on GG. It's pretty much what I expected. Hit the ball decent and the numbers are good, hit it bad and they aren't. I tried to get a screen grab but it chopped the HBH stats into two pages. Here are a couple examples

Hole 1

stroke 1 424 T to 164 F SG .03

stroke 2 164 F to 4 G SG .85

stroke 3 4 G to 0 C SG .15

total SG 1.03 ( I made birdie)

Hole 6

stroke 1 410 T to 410 T SG (2.00)

OB

stroke 3 410 T to 200 R SG (.41)

stroke 4 200 R to 67 R SG (.50)

stroke 5 67 R to 8 G SG .4

stroke 6 8 G to 0 C .52

total SG (1.99) ( I made double with a 25 foot putt)

Through 9 holes anything that could be considered a poor shot yielded -SG anything decent +SG but mostly inline with the quality of the shots. Not surprising was the further away from the hole I was the worse the stats were, from a low of (3.44) at 201+ to 3.72 at 51-100. I found the putting stats a little sketchy, everything is in yards rather than feet. It dinged me (.95) for missing a 9 foot (3 yd) putt. Really was about 7.5 feet. I shot 41 that day, my total SG (5.76) so pretty much mirrored the score with the weird putt ding.

It's cool but could be better, no lies for fringe seems odd. Wasn't sure what lie to use for a shot that landed on the fringe of a par 3, relevant choices are fairway and rough and this was neither. I will go back and edit it to green to see how that changes it but probably not much seems to key on distance more than anything.

[RFKFREAK]

I input 9 holes from my last round I have posted on GG. It's pretty much what I expected. Hit the ball decent and the numbers are good, hit it bad and they aren't. I tried to get a screen grab but it chopped the HBH stats into two pages. Here are a couple examples

Hole 1

stroke 1 424 T to 164 F SG .03

stroke 2 164 F to 4 G SG .85

stroke 3 4 G to 0 C SG .15

total SG 1.03 ( I made birdie)

Hole 6

stroke 1 410 T to 410 T SG (2.00)

OB

stroke 3 410 T to 200 R SG (.41)

stroke 4 200 R to 67 R SG (.50)

stroke 5 67 R to 8 G SG .4

stroke 6 8 G to 0 C .52

total SG (1.99) ( I made double)

Through 9 holes anything that could be considered a poor shot yielded -SG anything decent +SG but mostly inline with the quality of the shots. Not surprising was the further away from the hole I was the worse the stats were, from a low of (3.44) at 201+ to 3.72 at 51-100. I found the putting stats a little sketchy. It dinged me (.95) for missing a 9 foot putt. I shot 41 that day, my total SG (5.76) so pretty much mirrored the score with the weird putt ding.

It's cool but could be better, no lies for fringe seems odd. Wasn't sure what lie to use for a shot that landed on the fringe of a par 3, relevant choices are fairway and rough and this was neither. I will go back and edit it to green to see how that changes it but probably not much seems to key on distance more than anything.

Are you getting your SG number from strokesgainedgolf.com?

[Dave2512]

Where are you getting your SG number from?

Not sure what you mean it's next to every shot. The trial version is super generic so I assume the comparison is simple based on par and distance. I would hope the full version allows you to compare against ranges of golfers sorting by specific stats. The trial seems heavily dependent on distance and lie.

Edit: For example I went back and changed stroke 3 on hole 6 to 410 T to 190 F and it changed to (.13). If you didn't sign up for the trial T=tee F=fairway R=rough G=green etc. Just moving 10 yards closer to the green from rough to fairway is worth nearly a 1/3 of stroke in their eyes.

Totally wouldn't have mattered on this course or hole because the rough and fairway are virtually the same this time of year. Rough probably better because it may sit up a bit. In fact where the hole was that day in the rough right was a better spot. Still doesn't matter like I mentioned what I've learned from GG is I play Groundhog Day golf. This hole is always a problem for me.

[SCC4380]

I think it will be most useful when looking at the data over time, as opposed to shot by shot, though StrokesGainedGolf does give that information.

The strokes gained is based on distance from the pin and lie before and after each shot.

ShotByShot does allow you to compare yourself to golfers of different handicaps based on the 200,000+ rounds of data that have been entered into it, but StrokesGainedGolf is new and only allows comparison to tour pros.

I will work on getting some images of the reports that it gives me and post some updates.

[RandallT]

I am leaning toward keeping the subscription to StrokesGainedGolf.com and doing the Aimpoint clinic. The strokes gained analysis will give me a measure of my ball striking and the Aimpoint will help me improve my chances once I get onto the green. Perhaps next year's investment will be Game Golf and by then they might have additional statistics available.

Have you looked at Arccos? It has its drawbacks but if you like strokes gained, my gut is that Arccos is a bit more into that style of analysis than GG. https://support.arccosgolf.com/customer/portal/articles/1719993-web-dashboard I've looked at both to some degree and Arccos mentions strokes gained in more detail. FWIW, I'd choose Aimpoint over GG/Arccos-type tools for myself. If it has to be one over the other, I'd select the one where you actually learn a specific skill over the one that helps you figure out which skill you need work on.

[SCC4380]

I don't have a smart phone, so Arccos is not an option. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Right now I am leaning toward Aimpoint so that I can learn a specific skill and put it into use.

[Dave2512]

I think it will be most useful when looking at the data over time, as opposed to shot by shot, though StrokesGainedGolf does give that information.

The strokes gained is based on distance from the pin and lie before and after each shot.

ShotByShot does allow you to compare yourself to golfers of different handicaps based on the 200,000+ rounds of data that have been entered into it, but StrokesGainedGolf is new and only allows comparison to tour pros.

I will work on getting some images of the reports that it gives me and post some updates.

It could be and I will input rounds until the trial ends. But I suspect given the distance factor not much to be learned, we lose strokes the further away we are from the hole and the measure of performance starts on the tee. It's a cool site for those that want to track for the sake of tracking but Broadie's book doesn't leave any of this in doubt. In fact I didn't even finish the book because after a few chapters the data and message was superfluous. And I think the SGG putting stats are flawed given the heavy reliance on distance they are using. From what I've seen so far it's at odds with Broadie's data.

I'll check out the other site later because I think being able to compare against other amateurs is interesting but like I mentioned earlier it wouldn't change how I practice or play because some of it is out of my control. As a higher handicap golfer I am going to hit more bad shots than good regardless of intent. Broadie's book gives enough data on this using the pro-scratch-70-80-90 golfer examples.  Anyone that wants to improve these type of stats needs to improve ball striking, there isn't a hidden message to be found gleaning through stats. You won't go from shooting 90 to 80 learning that you lose strokes from distance X because the answer is still the same. It's akin to getting fit if you are overweight. You can't spot reduce but with regular exercise and clean living the entire body changes. So it is with ball striking. Improve that and you will perform better across the board. I suppose it could shed light on course strategy. But again to pull it off requires execution and the best we can hope for is to hit to areas on the course that accommodate our misses at this level.

Aimpoint is cool, I attended the seminar at the golf expo here a few years ago and a guy I took some lessons from is an AP guy. But IMO you can get just as much from the putting advice on this site and in LSW and take that to the practice green for immediate results. Cheap and easy.

[SCC4380]

Quote:

As a higher handicap golfer I am going to hit more bad shots than good regardless of intent. Broadie's book gives enough data on this using the pro-scratch-70-80-90 golfer examples.  Anyone that wants to improve these type of stats needs to improve ball striking, there isn't a hidden message to be found gleaning through stats. You won't go from shooting 90 to 80 learning that you lose strokes from distance X because the answer is still the same.

I don't disagree, but if I am working on my game and trying to get better, I would like to have a reliable metric to measure my performance, and, hopefully, my improvement.

[ghalfaire]

I have been intrigued with the idea of strokes gained based statistics ever since I read the article.  But when I tried to do it I found the task of taking data onerous and distracting from just playing golf while on the course.  So I have tried to come up with a less precise but more efficient and less distracting system based on the concept of did you last shot help or hinder you ability to make the next shot.  So my evaluation of the shot I just took is to assign a score of +1 or -1 based whether or not it helped or hurt my ability to execute the next shot such that I can accomplish whatever the plan for this hole is.  For example if playing a par 5, I almost never plan to go for the green in 2, if I manage to hit an exceptional drive that leaves me 200 yards or less, I would give that drive a score of +1 as whether or not I lay up I have better chance of being on in 3 which was the plan.  Conversely, if I hit into the deep rough and have to "wedge out" then I am less likely to be on in 3, so the score for that is -1.  I do also have a zero score at times when the shot is my usual 230 yards with 240 .  In that case my ability to be on in 3 in neither enhanced or diminished by the shot, so its a zero.  I have not had enough rounds to have a good feel for the correlation between my scorecard and my "shot count" yet but can say in general when the shot count is positive I have a "good score" for me and when negative I don't.

[Dave2512]

I've been tracking stats since 2012. Started with Scorecard, used GolfLogix for club tracking and stats for a while before moving on GolfNet's tracker. I like GN the best of those though GL had a pretty cool putt tracking feature. But after using Game Golf for a couple months the only thing I am learning is what I already knew that I am incredibly inconsistent. I play the same rotation of courses all year, hundreds of rounds and besides a couple holes that always give me trouble I rarely do the same thing twice. Even course knowledge can't overcome the randomness in how I play. It's just all over the place. The only consistent thing is my scoring average is pretty tight. I don't usually have rounds with exceptional variances. It's 8-9 pars a couple doubles a birdie and bogeys every time.

[RFKFREAK]

I've been tracking stats since 2012. Started with Scorecard, used GolfLogix for club tracking and stats for a while before moving on GolfNet's tracker. I like GN the best of those though GL had a pretty cool putt tracking feature. But after using Game Golf for a couple months the only thing I am learning is what I already knew that I am incredibly inconsistent. I play the same rotation of courses all year, hundreds of rounds and besides a couple holes that always give me trouble I rarely do the same thing twice. Even course knowledge can't overcome the randomness in how I play. It's just all over the place. The only consistent thing is my scoring average is pretty tight. I don't usually have rounds with exceptional variances. It's 8-9 pars a couple doubles a birdie and bogeys every time.

Sounds like it's a frustrating case of being consistently inconsistent.

[Dave2512]

It is but some it is expectation. The more we improve the more critical we are.

[natureboy]

I input 9 holes from my last round I have posted on GG. It's pretty much what I expected. Hit the ball decent and the numbers are good, hit it bad and they aren't. I tried to get a screen grab but it chopped the HBH stats into two pages. Here are a couple examples

Hole 1

stroke 1 424 T to 164 F SG .03

stroke 2 164 F to 4 G SG .85

stroke 3 4 G to 0 C SG .15

total SG 1.03 ( I made birdie)

Hole 6

stroke 1 410 T to 410 T SG (2.00)

OB

stroke 3 410 T to 200 R SG (.41)

stroke 4 200 R to 67 R SG (.50)

stroke 5 67 R to 8 G SG .4

stroke 6 8 G to 0 C .52

total SG (1.99) ( I made double with a 25 foot putt)

Through 9 holes anything that could be considered a poor shot yielded -SG anything decent +SG but mostly inline with the quality of the shots. Not surprising was the further away from the hole I was the worse the stats were, from a low of (3.44) at 201+ to 3.72 at 51-100. I found the putting stats a little sketchy, everything is in yards rather than feet. It dinged me (.95) for missing a 9 foot (3 yd) putt. Really was about 7.5 feet. I shot 41 that day, my total SG (5.76) so pretty much mirrored the score with the weird putt ding.

It's cool but could be better, no lies for fringe seems odd. Wasn't sure what lie to use for a shot that landed on the fringe of a par 3, relevant choices are fairway and rough and this was neither. I will go back and edit it to green to see how that changes it but probably not much seems to key on distance more than anything.

What is the baseline for SGG? What 'field' are you gaining strokes relative to...par...scratch players...PGA pros?

I think it will be most useful when looking at the data over time, as opposed to shot by shot, though StrokesGainedGolf does give that information.

The strokes gained is based on distance from the pin and lie before and after each shot.

ShotByShot does allow you to compare yourself to golfers of different handicaps based on the 200,000+ rounds of data that have been entered into it, but StrokesGainedGolf is new and only allows comparison to tour pros.

I will work on getting some images of the reports that it gives me and post some updates.

Do you know this for sure? Does SGG fator in the course rating difference or hole length relative to the PGA baseline?

[RandallT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave2512

I input 9 holes from my last round I have posted on GG. It's pretty much what I expected. Hit the ball decent and the numbers are good, hit it bad and they aren't. I tried to get a screen grab but it chopped the HBH stats into two pages. Here are a couple examples

Hole 1

stroke 1 424 T to 164 F SG .03

stroke 2 164 F to 4 G SG .85

stroke 3 4 G to 0 C SG .15

total SG 1.03 ( I made birdie)

Hole 6

stroke 1 410 T to 410 T SG (2.00)

OB

stroke 3 410 T to 200 R SG (.41)

stroke 4 200 R to 67 R SG (.50)

stroke 5 67 R to 8 G SG .4

stroke 6 8 G to 0 C .52

total SG (1.99) ( I made double with a 25 foot putt)

Through 9 holes anything that could be considered a poor shot yielded -SG anything decent +SG but mostly inline with the quality of the shots. Not surprising was the further away from the hole I was the worse the stats were, from a low of (3.44) at 201+ to 3.72 at 51-100. I found the putting stats a little sketchy, everything is in yards rather than feet. It dinged me (.95) for missing a 9 foot (3 yd) putt. Really was about 7.5 feet. I shot 41 that day, my total SG (5.76) so pretty much mirrored the score with the weird putt ding.

It's cool but could be better, no lies for fringe seems odd. Wasn't sure what lie to use for a shot that landed on the fringe of a par 3, relevant choices are fairway and rough and this was neither. I will go back and edit it to green to see how that changes it but probably not much seems to key on distance more than anything.

What is the baseline for SGG? What 'field' are you gaining strokes relative to...par...scratch players...PGA pros?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SCC4380

I think it will be most useful when looking at the data over time, as opposed to shot by shot, though StrokesGainedGolf does give that information.

The strokes gained is based on distance from the pin and lie before and after each shot.

ShotByShot does allow you to compare yourself to golfers of different handicaps based on the 200,000+ rounds of data that have been entered into it, but StrokesGainedGolf is new and only allows comparison to tour pros.

I will work on getting some images of the reports that it gives me and post some updates.

Do you know this for sure? Does SGG fator in the course rating difference or hole length relative to the PGA baseline?

To my knowledge, the various strokes gained tools available all use PGA Tour data. If you dig hard enough, you can find enough publicly released information that you can patch together how many strokes it takes professionals to hole out from virtually any distance and lie.  I'm sure there are now databases from other tools that have similar information about amateurs, but I've never found that info available.

There has been talk about Mark Broadie releasing some data for strokes gained for various profiles of amateur golfers, but much of that chatter has died down as his forthcoming app seems to encounter delay after delay.

From my reading of the SGG site, they do not account in any way for course rating. It is strictly distance and lie.  If you are in the US Open with deep rough, or whether you are in the sparse rough of a local muni, SGG would use the same numbers for calculation from what I can tell.

[Dave2512]

What is the baseline for SGG? What 'field' are you gaining strokes relative to...par...scratch players...PGA pros?

SGG seems to base everything on par and distance. I only input that one 9 holes. Very generic and not useful to me. Honestly I forgot about it though wasn't interested from the start. I only need to look at my scores to know I am losing strokes all over the course. I think it could be useful if Game Golf could develop something to compare against your own average HBH stats and ranges of similarly skilled golfers.

[natureboy]

To my knowledge, the various strokes gained tools available all use PGA Tour data. If you dig hard enough, you can find enough publicly released information that you can patch together how many strokes it takes professionals to hole out from virtually any distance and lie.  I'm sure there are now databases from other tools that have similar information about amateurs, but I've never found that info available.

There has been talk about Mark Broadie releasing some data for strokes gained for various profiles of amateur golfers, but much of that chatter has died down as his forthcoming app seems to encounter delay after delay.

From my reading of the SGG site, they do not account in any way for course rating. It is strictly distance and lie.  If you are in the US Open with deep rough, or whether you are in the sparse rough of a local muni, SGG would use the same numbers for calculation from what I can tell.

SGG seems to base everything on par and distance. I only input that one 9 holes. Very generic and not useful to me. Honestly I forgot about it though wasn't interested from the start. I only need to look at my scores to know I am losing strokes all over the course.

I think it could be useful if Game Golf could develop something to compare against your own average HBH stats and ranges of similarly skilled golfers.

For your own purposes, you could make a course adjustment. The average PGA tour pro is roughly around a 'plus 5' so you could figure out what that handicap would shoot on your course rating (~69 average score on a course rating of 72) and adjust the SGG strokes gained by the difference between the average score of your handicap. That wouldn't be quite kosher, because different handicap levels have different relative strengths than the pros, but it might balance out the numbers so you would get some positives in your strong areas and negatives in your weaker ones.

[Dave2512]

I see no reason to compare myself to pros. My goal for golf is to improve. I mentioned earlier in the thread that the answer remains the same no matter what stats I see. To play better gol I need to become a better ball striker. There isn't any hidden message in my stats.

[The Recreational Golfer]

I'm not sold on strokes gained for recreational golfers. Touring pros are trying to shave maybe one stroke per round. Two would be huge. We're trying to get rid of two fists full of strokes.

If you're trying to break 90, there shouldn't be any doubt that you don't hit the ball straight that often, your short game needs work, and you are a below average putter. How many strokes you gain or lose, to the second decimal place, won't tell you anything you don't already know. Strokes gained makes a lot more sense once you get into the mid-low single digits, in my opinion.