Strokes gained

Strokes gained has been around long enough to collect a set of misconceptions that survive because they sound reasonable. Here are seven of them, and what your own numbers say instead.

For most of its existence golf measured itself with one number per round. It took until 2003 for anyone to record where the ball actually went, and until the 2010s for that idea to reach club golfers.

A 25 mph day can wipe two strokes off your round before you make a single bad swing. Wind does not get subtracted from your strokes gained, so it pays to know exactly where it takes the strokes from.

Strokes gained looks complicated because the answers come back as decimals. The calculation underneath is a single subtraction applied to every shot, using a lookup table of expected strokes built from tour data.

The club you trust most is often not your best club, and the part of your game you apologize for is often fine. A simple self assessment against your strokes gained data shows where belief and performance have come apart.

A red strokes gained page is not a verdict. Here is how to work out whether your numbers are showing a genuine problem, a rough patch, or a data issue you can fix in five minutes.