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. It's available with the Intelligence subscription, and it's the clearest way to understand exactly where you're gaining and losing strokes.
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
Strokes Gained breaks your performance down across four areas of the game:
- Off the Tee: 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: how close your shots into the green finish, from the fairway, rough, or any other lie. Often the biggest differentiator between good and great golfers.
- Around the Green: chips, pitches, bunker shots, and any shot within 30 yards of the green. Losing strokes here usually points to distance control and lie variation.
- Putting: your performance on the greens. A negative number often signals speed control, green reading, or consistency issues.
Where you'll find it
Strokes Gained appears in two places in Hole19, showing the same underlying data at two different levels of detail.
In your Round Report. After you finish and save a round, your Round Summary shows a Strokes Gained total for that round, worked out hole by hole. Tap it to open a graph with a short explanation below, telling you whether you gained or lost strokes overall. If any holes have missing or partial shot data, the Strokes Gained header flags how many. Tap into Strokes Gained again from there for the full analysis, including a Strokes Gained by club breakdown showing which clubs gained or cost you strokes in that round.
In your Performance section. This is the aggregated view across your round history. It shows the same explanatory context, plus how many rounds have been tracked, an info tooltip on the total spelling out what the number means (positive means gaining strokes against the field, negative means losing them), and a Strokes Gained trend chart so you can see whether your game is moving in the right direction over time. The trend chart is normalised to 18 holes and includes every round with Strokes Gained data as a point, so gaps from shorter rounds don't distort the picture. Strokes Gained by club is available here too, aggregated across your round history.
Untracked shots
You don't need to track every single shot to get a Strokes Gained total. Hole19 still calculates a total for every hole you played, and a dedicated Untracked row at the bottom of the Clubs section shows how many shots weren't individually tracked, along with their estimated Strokes Gained per shot and impact per round. The more shots you track, the more that Untracked row shrinks and the more precise your category breakdown becomes.
Otto AI insights
On the Strokes Gained detail screens, Otto adds a short, plain-language insight on top of the numbers, for example: "Your approach shots from 100–150 yards have been costing you strokes across your last 10 rounds." It's built to name one clear pattern and point you toward what to work on, rather than leaving you to interpret the charts alone.
If you haven't tracked enough rounds yet for a reliable pattern, you'll see Insights updating… or a prompt to play more rounds before a personalised insight for that area becomes available.
Tier availability
Strokes Gained is an Intelligence feature. Free and Premium users will see a Strokes Gained card with an upgrade prompt, but it won't be built from their own round data. To unlock full Strokes Gained analysis, upgrade to Intelligence.
It requires shot tracking data, either manual (Shot Tracker, Premium) or automatic (Auto Shot Detection, Intelligence).
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