Strokes Gained measures your performance against a benchmark, not just how many shots you took, but whether each shot was better or worse than expected. Available with the Intelligence subscription, it's the clearest way to understand exactly where you're gaining and losing strokes during a round.
Why Strokes Gained matters more than your scorecard
Your scorecard tells you the total. Strokes Gained tells you why.
Without data, it's easy to blame your driver when the real problem is your approach from 100–150 yards, or to think your putting is costing you strokes when it's actually your short game around the green. Strokes Gained cuts through the guesswork and shows you where to focus your practice time.
How it works
Every shot you hit is assigned an expected number of strokes to hole out from that position. Based on distance to the hole, the lie, and the benchmark handicap level. If you leave the ball in a better position than expected, you gain strokes. If you leave it in a worse position, you lose strokes.
Example: You're a 15-handicap, 200 yards out in the fairway. From there, the expected strokes to finish the hole is 3.16. You knock it to 20 feet, a position where the expected strokes drops to 1.87. The calculation: 3.16 − 1.87 − 1 (the shot you took) = +0.29 strokes gained.
Pull it left into the rough 30 yards out instead, and the expected strokes from there is 2.61. The calculation: 3.16 − 2.61 − 1 = −0.45 strokes lost.
The four categories
Hole19 breaks Strokes Gained down across four areas of the game:
- Off the Tee: measures distance and accuracy on tee shots. A long drive into the rough can still gain strokes; a short drive down the middle can cost them.
- Approach: measures how close your iron shots get you to the hole, whether from the fairway, rough, or other lies. This is often the biggest differentiator between good and great golfers.
- Around the Green: covers chips, pitches, bunker shots, and any shot within 30 yards of the green. Losing strokes here usually points to distance control and lie variation practice.
- Putting: measures your performance on the greens. A negative number often signals issues with speed control, green reading, or consistency.
How to use Strokes Gained in Hole19
To get Strokes Gained data, you need to record every shot during your round: tee shots, approaches, chips, pitches, bunker shots, and putts. Hole19 does the heavy lifting automatically when you use Shot Tracker.
- Start a round and track your shots using Shot Tracker.
- After the round, open the Round Summary.
- Tap Strokes Gained to see your breakdown across all four categories.
The more rounds you track, the more reliable and actionable your data becomes.
Related articles
- How Shot Tracker works
- How Auto Shot Detection works
- What's included in the Intelligence subscription
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