Bryson DeChambeau hit a 417 yards drive at the 2020 Ryder Cup, how many strokes did he gain with that?
One of the highlights of last weekend's Ryder Cup was a monster drive by Bryson DeChambeau.
Bryson and Scottie Scheffler were playing the Friday afternoon fourballs against Jon Rahm and Tyrrel Hatton. On the fifth hole, a 518 yards par five with two lakes, Bryson decided he would shot over the first lake... and he did, watch the video here.
The ball landed in the fairway 72 yards from the hole, he hit a beautiful approach that left the ball 4' from the hole and sank it for an easy eagle that won the hole for the US couple.
How good was that hole by Bryson DeChambeau? Let's use our favorite tool, strokes gained, to assess that.
The scoring average for a PGA tour player from the tee on a 581 yards hole is 4.79 shots, slightly under par. Bryson drove the ball to 72 yards in the fairway, where the scoring benchmark is 2.72 shots.
So, that monster drive took Bryson from a 4.79 shots benchmark to 2.72 shots, which means he gained 4.79 - 2.72 - 1 = 1.07 shots. This means in just one shot he took one complete shot off the average PGA tour player; in other words, the average PGA player would use two shots to reach the same spot where Bryson was after just one shot.
The second shot, from 72 yards, was also very good, with 0.59 strokes gained. And the 4' putt gained 0.13 shots.
The total for the hole was 1.79 shots, Bryson took almost two shots from the average PGA tour player in only one hole.
We know strokes gained are better for analyzing aggregated data and grouped by type of shot, but this is still fun to do, isn't it?
If you want to get your strokes gained you can easily track your shots on a regular scorecard, just like Mike Carroll shows us.
"If you’re serious about getting to scratch, you should be using strokes gained analysis". That's what Sean Denning concludes in his blog, Par Machine.
Data Golf is one of the best sites for fans of golf analytics.
The PGA Tour measures strokes gained in four different categories
If you want to know if you are putting well, putts gained is the way to go and golfity will calculate your putts gained
