How it works
Understanding Strokes Gained
A plain-English guide to what strokes gained actually measures, why it tells you more than a scorecard ever can, and how to use this app to improve faster.
The basics
What is strokes gained?
Strokes gained is a way of measuring every shot you hit against what a player at a given level would be expected to take from the same position. It was developed by Columbia Business School professor Mark Broadie and is now used by the PGA Tour, European Tour, and every serious coaching programme worldwide.
The core idea is simple. Before you hit a shot, the model knows roughly how many strokes a scratch golfer is expected to take from where your ball is sitting — the lie, the distance to the hole. After you hit it, the model recalculates from your new position. The difference tells you exactly how good or bad that shot was.
If you hit a 7-iron from 150 yards in the fairway to 12 feet, you've done something a scratch golfer wouldn't always do. That registers as a positive number — a gained stroke. If you three-putt from 8 feet, you've cost yourself relative to expectation. That's a lost stroke.
Add up all those gains and losses across 18 holes and you get a complete picture of where your game actually is — not just the score.
Why it matters
Traditional stats vs strokes gained
Traditional golf statistics — fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts per round — sound useful but they hide as much as they reveal. Here's why.
The result: traditional stats let you feel good about a 68 when you got lucky with the putter. Strokes gained shows you that your iron play cost you two shots and your putting saved three — information you can actually do something with in practice.
Four buckets
How SG is split into categories
This app breaks every shot into one of four categories. Each tells you something different about your game.
Most amateurs think putting is their biggest weakness. The data rarely agrees. Short game SG is usually the biggest separator between a 10 and an 18 handicap. This app shows you which category is costing you the most strokes each round — so you can point your practice time in the right direction.
Real examples
What the numbers look like in practice
Here are three shots from the same round. Each one shows you something different.
Notice that two of these shots look perfectly ordinary on a scorecard. The approach on hole 7 was a par. The chip on hole 11 led to a bogey — but was the shot really that bad? The SG number says it cost 0.31 shots, not a whole stroke. That context changes how you think about your round.
Using this app
How to use it during a round
The goal is to log each shot in about 10 seconds. You don't need to be precise to three decimal places — you need to be consistent. The more rounds you track, the more reliable the patterns become.
Select your lie (tee, fairway, rough, sand, recovery) and enter the distance to the hole. For tee shots this fills automatically from the course data. For approaches, use your rangefinder reading.
Select the finish lie and enter the remaining distance. For putts, enter distance in feet. Hit "Add shot + next hole" to move on quickly. The whole thing takes under 15 seconds once you're used to it.
Adding your club name lets the app build a club-by-club SG profile over time. Direction and contact tags help identify miss patterns. These are optional — start simple and add detail as you get comfortable.
Hit "Save round." You'll see your SG breakdown by category, your best and worst shots, and a handicap differential. Over several rounds, the pattern in your data becomes the most honest picture of your game you've ever had.
The baseline
What are you being compared to?
Every SG number is measured against a baseline player. You choose which baseline in the Performance panel using the comparison toggle.
Scratch is the default — a genuine zero handicapper. If you're a 10 handicap, you'd expect to see negative SG numbers overall, because you're losing strokes to scratch across all categories by definition. The value is knowing where you lose them.
Tour compares you to a PGA Tour player. Even a scratch golfer loses strokes to Tour from beyond 200 yards — that's normal and expected. Use Tour if you're a low handicap or professional and want an honest benchmark.
The other levels — +5, +10, +18, +28 — let a 10-handicap player see where they gain and lose strokes against someone at the same level. If you're trying to get from 18 to 12, compare to 18 and watch the categories that go negative. Those are your priorities.
Quick Mode
Using Quick Mode
For casual rounds where you don't need strokes gained detail, Quick Mode lets you skip the shot-by-shot Add Shot flow entirely. Instead, you see a grid of every hole with a simple +/− score input. One tap to set the score per hole, then save as normal.
Quick Mode saves to exactly the same round storage and Supabase cloud sync as a full round. The round will appear in Saved Rounds. The only difference is that without shot detail, strokes gained categories (off tee, approach, short game, putting) will show as zero — the gross score and handicap differential are calculated normally from your hole scores.
Open the Settings & Saved Rounds drawer, expand the Settings panel, and toggle on Quick Mode in the Quick Mode section. A gold "Quick Mode" pill will appear in the header to confirm it is active.
The Add Shot panel is hidden. In its place you'll see a Quick Score Entry panel with every hole listed as a card. Each card shows the hole number and par. Tap + to increase your score or − to decrease it. The card highlights gold once a score is entered.
Hit "Save round" inside the Quick Score Entry panel. Your gross score and handicap differential are saved. To see a trends chart of your scores over time, open Saved Rounds and tap the "Trends" button.
Common questions
FAQ
My score was level par but SG shows +1.5. Is that an error?
No — it means the course is harder than par suggests. If the course rating is 75.1 and you play to par 72, you've beaten the scratch expectation by 3.1 shots for 18 holes (or ~1.5 for 9 holes). The SG model picks that up correctly because it's calibrated to scratch expectation, not to par. This is actually the system working properly — par is an arbitrary number, course rating is what actually reflects difficulty.
Do I need to track every single shot?
Yes, for accurate SG. The model works shot-by-shot — if you skip shots, the totals will be off. That said, partial data is still useful for the shots you do track. At minimum, log start lie, start distance, finish lie, and finish distance. Everything else (club, tags, notes) adds detail but isn't required for the core SG calculation.
My GIR shows 9/9 but I had bunker shots. Why?
GIR (greens in regulation) counts as a green hit only when the shot before your first putt had a finish lie of "green." If you were in a bunker, chipped out to the green, then putted — that's not a GIR, because the shot before the putt finished from rough or sand, not from an approach directly onto the green. Make sure you're logging finish lies accurately and GIR will reflect reality.
How many rounds do I need before the data is useful?
Three to five rounds gives you a trend. One round tells you about that day — which is interesting — but patterns in your game take a few rounds to emerge clearly. After 10 rounds, you'll have a very reliable picture of your strengths and your leaks. The handicap index calculation in the app gets more accurate as you add rounds too.
What's the difference between SG and a handicap?
A handicap is calculated from your gross score relative to course rating and slope. It tells you roughly how good a scorer you are, but nothing about why. SG breaks your score down into its components — tee shots, approaches, short game, putting — and tells you exactly where strokes are being gained or lost. Two players with an 8 handicap can have completely different SG profiles: one might be a great iron player who putts poorly, the other might scramble brilliantly but leak shots off the tee. The handicap doesn't distinguish them. SG does.
The numbers seem small. Does +0.3 per shot really matter?
Over 18 holes it adds up fast. A consistent +0.3 SG per approach shot across 10 approach shots per round is +3 shots per round in that category alone. The difference between a Tour player and a scratch golfer in approach SG is roughly 1.2 shots per round. Small consistent gains in one category can transform a handicap over a season.
What is Quick Mode and when should I use it?
Quick Mode skips the shot-by-shot Add Shot flow and gives you a simple hole-by-hole score grid instead. Use it for social rounds, courses you haven't loaded full data for, or any time you want to track your score without the overhead of logging every shot. Your gross score and handicap differential are saved normally. Strokes gained categories will be empty because there's no shot detail, but your score trend in the Saved Rounds chart will still be accurate.
Ready to track your first round?
Open the app, choose your course, and start with hole one. It takes one round to get comfortable, two to start seeing patterns.
Open the app →