How Strokes Gained Handles Recovery Shots and Penalties
A punch-out from the trees and a ball in the water both break the simple strokes gained formula. Here is how recovery shots and penalty strokes are actually scored, and why the numbers land where they do.
Most strokes gained explanations use tidy examples. Fairway to green, green to hole, one shot at a time. Then you play a real round, hit a tee ball into the trees, punch out sideways, and later drown one down the right. Neither of those fits the tidy version. Strokes gained recovery values and penalty strokes are handled by specific rules, and knowing them changes how you read your own numbers.
The two cases break the formula in opposite ways. A recovery shot has a position, but it is a position where the normal expectations do not apply. A penalty has no position at all.
The formula both cases have to fit
Every shot is scored the same way. Take the expected strokes from where the ball started, subtract the expected strokes from where it finished, then subtract the one shot you used. Positive means you beat the benchmark, negative means you lost ground. That is the whole of strokes gained, and the full explanation of the concept covers the basics.
Expected strokes come from a lookup table with two inputs: distance to the hole and lie. golfity uses six lies. Tee, fairway, rough, sand, green, and recovery. The numbers below come from the table for a golfer who shoots around 80, which is one of several benchmarks you can choose between in the app.
Recovery is a lie, not a distance
Recovery covers the ball you cannot advance toward the target. Behind a tree, under branches, up against a fence, in a spot where the shot you want is unavailable and the shot you have is sideways.
Look at what the benchmark does across distances:
| Distance to hole | Fairway | Rough | Recovery |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 yd | 3.29 | 3.50 | 3.83 |
| 100 yd | 3.39 | 3.61 | 3.80 |
| 150 yd | 3.54 | 3.78 | 3.81 |
| 200 yd | 3.78 | 4.01 | 3.87 |
| 240 yd | 4.04 | 4.23 | 3.97 |
The recovery column barely moves. It shifts 0.14 strokes across 180 yards while the fairway column shifts 0.75. That is the defining property of the lie: once you are punching out, distance to the hole stops driving the outcome, because the next shot is not going to the hole. You are buying your way back into the fairway, and that costs roughly the same from 60 yards as it does from 240.
Which produces a result worth sitting with. A ball 60 yards from the green with a tree in the way (3.83) is worse than a ball 200 yards away in the short grass (3.78). Proximity is worthless when you have no line.
Past about 220 yards the recovery number actually dips below the fairway number. That is not a glitch. From that far out, a clean shot from the fairway is not reaching the green either, so the gap between “I can advance normally” and “I have to punch out” closes to almost nothing.
What recovery does to the shot before it
The recovery lie mostly punishes the shot that put you there, which is exactly the point of the model.
Take a 400-yard par 4. Expected strokes from the tee: 4.58.
- Drive 230 yards into the trees, 170 left. Recovery at 170 yards is worth 3.82, so the tee shot scores 4.58 − 1 − 3.82 = −0.24.
- Same drive, same distance, but in the fairway. Fairway at 170 is 3.62, so the tee shot scores 4.58 − 1 − 3.62 = −0.04.
Two tenths of a stroke for the trees, which feels small for a shot that ruined the hole. It is small, at that distance. Move the same comparison in close and it grows: 60 yards in the trees against 60 yards in the fairway is 3.83 against 3.29, a gap of 0.54.
The rest of the damage shows up on the punch-out itself, which almost always loses ground because you are giving up a shot to gain almost no position.
Where recovery shots end up in your category totals
Recovery does not get its own line in your breakdown. Shots are filed by distance like any other: inside 30 yards they count as around the green, beyond that they count as approach.
That has a practical consequence. If your SG approach number looks worse than your ball striking feels, check how many of those “approach shots” were punch-outs sideways from under a tree. A round with three of them will drag the category down even when every genuine approach was fine. The round summary reads very differently once you know which shots are in which bucket.
Penalties are charged to the shot that caused them
A penalty stroke has no lie and no distance, so it cannot be scored the normal way. golfity gives the penalty entry a benchmark of zero and a strokes gained of exactly zero. It never shows up as a shot that lost anything.
The stroke itself is subtracted from the shot that put you in trouble.
Same 400-yard par 4, tee shot in the water down the right, drop leaving 250 yards:
- Expected from the tee: 4.58
- One shot used: −1
- Expected from the drop at 250 in the fairway: −4.11
- The penalty stroke: −1
- Tee shot strokes gained: −1.53
A solid drive to 150 in the fairway on the same hole scores 4.58 − 1 − 3.54 = +0.05. The water ball is 1.58 strokes worse than a decent tee shot, on one swing.
Assigning it this way is the honest accounting. The drop was not the mistake. The tee shot was. Splitting the penalty into its own neutral category would let the shot that caused it look average, which is how golfers end up believing their driving is fine.
The knock-on effect is worth remembering when you review a round. Penalties land inside whichever category produced them, so tee-shot penalties sink your SG off the tee and approaches into hazards sink your SG approach. A category that suddenly collapses is often one wet ball rather than a trend, and it will usually be sitting at the top of your awful shots list. The wider question of when to take the risk at all is covered in how to manage penalty shots with data.
Two things to get right when you track
Mark the lie honestly. The gap between rough and recovery is small at long range and large near the green. At 170 yards, calling a punch-out “rough” barely moves the number. At 60 yards it hides a third of a stroke, because rough at 60 is 3.50 and recovery is 3.83. If you had no shot at the green, log it as recovery.
Log the penalty as its own entry. Adding a stroke to your score without recording the penalty leaves the math short. The stroke disappears from the calculation, your tee shot looks better than it was, and the round total stops matching the card. Manual shot entry has a dedicated penalty option for this reason.
Get both right and the strokes gained recovery and penalty numbers in your round will point at the decisions that actually cost you, which is the only reason to track any of it. The shot you remember as unlucky usually turns out to be the one the model already flagged.
