Golf Analytics
Strokes gained, shot dispersion, scoring breakdowns and the data metrics that have reshaped tour strategy and amateur instruction over the past fifteen years — taught from first principles.
- Metric Primers
- 18
- Calculator Tools
- 6
- Amateur Benchmarks
- Every handicap
- Updated
- After every tour season
Golf analytics is the most important conceptual shift in amateur instruction over the past fifteen years. Strokes Gained — introduced to the PGA Tour by Mark Broadie and now the canonical tour metric — finally answered a question every golfer had been asking for a century: where do my strokes actually go? The answer turned out to be very different from the conventional wisdom ("drive for show, putt for dough" is, on tour, largely false), and the implications cascade through every coaching, practice and equipment decision a player makes.
ResortGolfer's analytics hub teaches the framework from first principles. The Strokes Gained primer derives the metric from a tour-baseline expected-strokes table, walks through the four categories (off the tee, approach, around the green, putting), explains why approach play is the single largest scoring driver on tour and at every amateur handicap above scratch, and shows how to compute SG numbers from your own round data using Arccos, Shot Scope, 18Birdies or our own free calculator tools.
Shot dispersion is the second pillar. Most amateurs dramatically misjudge their own dispersion patterns — the area within which their tee shots actually scatter — because they remember good shots and forget bad ones. The dispersion primer covers pattern, ellipse modeling, the meaningful difference between mean and percentile-based aim points (you should aim at where your worst 80% of shots will go, not your average), and the implications for course strategy. This is the analytical underpinning of the Driving hub's strategy material.
The scoring-breakdown work translates SG and dispersion into specific practice priorities. A 14-handicap who loses two strokes per round to wedge play from 80–120 yards and only half a stroke to putting should spend ten times as much practice time on wedge-distance control as on putting drills — and most don't. The hub publishes amateur benchmarks by handicap so a reader can compare their own SG profile to the population and identify where the highest-ROI practice gains live. The Practice Guides hub then provides the motor-learning protocols to execute against those priorities.
We also maintain six interactive calculator tools (Strokes Gained, Course Handicap, Handicap Index, Score Differential, Shot Dispersion, Club Gapping), each documented openly with the formulas and assumptions they use. These are linked from the relevant primers and from the Tools hub, and are free to use without account creation or data submission.
“The most expensive practice on the range is practicing the thing you are already good at. Strokes Gained tells you which thing.”
Metrics that change how you play
Each metric is taught from first principles and translated into a practice priority.
Strokes Gained
Off the tee, approach, around the green and putting — derived from the expected-strokes table.
Shot Dispersion
Pattern, ellipse modeling, and why averages mislead in course strategy.
Scoring Breakdown
Where strokes actually go — and how to convert that into practice priorities.
Practice Efficiency
ROI per minute on the range, driven by your own Strokes Gained profile.
Tour Stat Glossary
GIR, SG, proximity to hole, scrambling, bogey avoidance — definitions and limits.
Amateur Benchmarks
What a 25-, 15-, 10- and 5-handicap actually look like, category by category.
About Golf Analytics
- What is Strokes Gained in golf?
- Strokes Gained measures how a player's score on a shot compares to the tour-average expected score from the same starting position. Positive SG means a shot was better than the baseline; negative SG means worse. The metric was developed by Mark Broadie at Columbia and adopted by the PGA Tour in 2011. It is the most informative single statistic in golf because it isolates skill at the shot level rather than aggregating across an entire round.
- Is driving more important than putting on the PGA Tour?
- Yes, in a narrow sense — Strokes Gained data shows that approach play is the largest category contributor to tour-level scoring, with driving second and putting a meaningful but smaller fourth. The classic "drive for show, putt for dough" maxim is largely overturned by the data. Among amateurs the relative weighting shifts (putting matters more for high-handicaps because three-putts are still common), but approach play remains the dominant scoring lever above roughly a 5-handicap.
- How do I calculate Strokes Gained for my own rounds?
- Three options: (1) use a shot-tracking system like Arccos or Shot Scope, which computes SG automatically against an amateur baseline; (2) use our free Strokes Gained calculator and enter your shots manually; (3) compute it by hand using the published expected-strokes table — the primer in this hub walks through a full example.
- What is a good shot-dispersion pattern for an amateur golfer?
- Dispersion is best evaluated as an ellipse (longer than wide) measured at the 80th-percentile contour — i.e., the area inside which 80% of your shots land. A scratch amateur typically shows a driver ellipse of roughly 25 yards wide by 40 long; a 15-handicap roughly 45 wide by 60 long. Aiming at the center of your own ellipse, not at the target, is the single highest-ROI strategic change most amateurs can make.
- What is the difference between strokes gained and stroke differential?
- Score (or stroke) differential is a single round-level number used to compute your handicap index — your gross or adjusted score relative to the course rating and slope. Strokes Gained is a shot-level metric measuring performance against a baseline at every shot in a round. The two are unrelated calculations that solve very different problems.
- Are the analytics tools on ResortGolfer free to use?
- Yes. All six calculators (Strokes Gained, Course Handicap, Handicap Index, Score Differential, Shot Dispersion, Club Gapping) are free, require no account creation, and never transmit your input data off your device. The formulas are documented openly so you can verify the math.