Strokes Gained Putting is the best measure of your putting skill and you can now use our free Strokes Gained Putting Calculator to calculate it.
Mark Broadie (the father of strokes gained) defined putts gained as the best measure of putting skill, much better than other commonly used metrics as putts per round, putts per green in regulation or even length of holed putts.
We can define Putts Gained (or Strokes Gained Putting) as the number of putts better or worse than the benchmark from a given distance. If the benchmark from a given distance is 2.5 putts and you hole in 2 putts you did better than the benchmark. If you need 3 putts, you did worse than the benchmark.
Calculating putts gained for any hole can seem difficult but is actually quite easy to understand. You only need to input two pieces of data:
The calculator will give you a benchmark from your given distance, which means the average number of putts a PGA tour player needs to hole from that distance.
If we subtract the benchmark and the number of putts you took we get the strokes gained putting for that hole.
For example, imagine your first putt is 40 feet from the hole and you need 2 putts to hole in. From that distance, the average of PGA tour players is 2.05 putts. As you did 2 putts, that means you gained 2.05 - 2 = 0.05 strokes over the benchmark.
If you had taken 3 putts, you would have lost 2.05 - 3 = -0.95 strokes in that hole.
To do that you only have to add the strokes gained putting for all the holes in the round.
If you have holed in from outside the green in any of holes in the round, the strokes gained putting in that hole would be 0. That makes a lot of sense, as you didn’t use the putter in that hole and we can not use that hole to assess your putting performance.
If you use the number of putts per round, those 0 putts would have been very positive and could lead you to think you were putting well when maybe you were not.
Our app already shows putts gained for your round, but we have now created a very simple calculator anyone can use without entering a whole round in golfity or even signing up for golfity.
Please try our free strokes gained putting calculator and let us know what you think. And if you want to get many more metrics that will help you improve your game sign up for golfity and start tracking your golf like a pro!
PS: if you want to calculate Strokes Gained for any shot, not only putts, you can also try our general Strokes Gained Calculator.
"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.
Now you can see the strokes gained for any round in your Golfity feed
If you want to get your strokes gained you can easily track your shots on a regular scorecard, just like Mike Carroll shows us.
Easy to use strokes gained calculator, calculate the strokes gained for any of your shots
Everybody talks about strokes gained but do you really know what it is?
