Why your golf stats app is lying to you – Strokes Gained vs. ‘Handicap’ analysis

Seriously – It’s Lying To Me?

Well, not lying perhaps, but not all stats are created equal, and how the stats are presented can be misleading. If your golf stats software is presenting you with a ‘handicap’ for each type of skill you should change it to show Strokes Gained stats instead – if you already use Strokes Gained, well done you! And if your app can’t do that, consider one that can. Why? Well…

Tom, you suck at chipping

Let’s take a look at Tom Shanks, a fictional golfer who has scratch skills on every type of shot except chipping from inside 50 yards, where his skill level is that of an 18 handicapper, this is what Tom sees:

Four skills, each with a ‘handicap’ associated with them, you’d be forgiven for thinking Tom holds a handicap around 4 or 5. After all, we see four skills – three zero’s and an eighteen – which would average out to 4.5, right?

Well, no – in fact, Tom is almost certainly a 2-3 handicapper. Confused? It’s because short game is not a big differentiator of score – in other words, a big skill difference in short game doesn’t translate to a big difference in score. In fact, the gap between great short game players and bad ones is smaller – measured in strokes per round – than it is for any other skill. And given that golf success is measured in strokes – that’s worth knowing.

The differences in outcome from chips are (usually) not as varied as they are from the tee or on approach, where there are real possibilities of a penalty stroke, or worse: re-teeing or blading over the green, or a shot plugged into a bunker face. Most of our chip shots will get on the green somewhere, and even if we chunk it or thin it and miss the green, we’re often closer than we were before. We also chip less often than we make other shots, and the outcomes of bad shots – measured in strokes gained – are rarely as bad as other types of shot.

Example: If my skill level at ludicrously high lob shots is as good as Scottie Scheffler how much is that actually worth to me? How often do I have to hit the ball less than 50 yards over a tall obstacle – maybe once every 3-4 rounds? A great shot from there would probably leave me a makable putt – so I’d get down in 2.5ish strokes if I’m great. If I’m not so great, I play a recovery punch to somewhere better to chip from near the green, and probably eventually get down in 3.5ish strokes. So the skill is worth a stroke, but only when I use it – once every few rounds. In other words, being the best in the world at super high lob shots is worth perhaps a third, or a quarter of a stroke compared with being poor at it. Imagine how many stokes per round the best in the world with driver gains against someone poor with driver…

So… what skills really matter?

Some skills affect scoring more than others – this table shows the difference between a scratch player and an 18 ‘capper measured in strokes per round and broken down by skill.

There are about 20 strokes (19.7) separating a scratch golfer and an 18 handicapper on a statistically average round. Improving your chipping skill from that of an 18-‘handicap skill ‘capper to scratch gains you only 2.7 strokes per round. But the same improvement with approach shots would gain you 7.2 strokes. Instead of counting by strokes, we can make the comparative value of skills even clearer, by looking at a weighted contribution:

If you want to understand how your skills affect your scores be sure you are using strokes gained as your metric in your analysis software. ‘Handicap’-based metrics provide far less information and can be misleading.

How should I prioritize what to work on?

If you’re trying to decide what to focus/practice on you will want to maximize return on investment hours/dollars. Consider:

• Prioritize skills which actually improve your score the most (this article!)
• There are bigger gains – and usually low-hanging fruit – in addressing areas in which you are weakest compared to your peers. Conversely, if you’re particularly good at something already, there may be diminishing returns there.
• Consider what’s holding you back. If you’re not powerful and struggle for distance, your ceiling for strokes gained off the tee will be much lower than most, and will start to see diminishing returns. Your skill level with driver could be very high, but if your maximal distance is ten yards lower than the average drive for your handicap, you would be sensible to invest time in other skills, or look at strength and speed training.
• Not all improvements require you to swing a golf club. For longer, wilder hitters, course management can offer a huge return per hour simply aiming at safer spots, and choosing better clubs.

But… don’t take this article as a suggestion to avoid practicing short game! Quite the opposite – when trying to to lower your score with practice, you’re looking for return on investment, and you want to maximize “strokes saved per hour of practice”. Some skills (like putting and chipping) are less technical, so you can make fast gains by practicing intelligently and often. Other skills are more technical and usually take a larger investment of time to see significant improvement (longer approach shots) so while there might be a lot of strokes available if you improve your 5 irons, you may need to invest a lot of hours to get there.

Question Time

Last, a quick quiz for you – see if you can guess the actual handicap from the skills:

And the answer is… (click to reveal)

This golfer would be a +1 – he loses the same amount to his “bad” skills as he does gaining on approach (1.5 shots per round) so they cancel out, and driving like a +2 golfer will gain him about 0.9 strokes off the tee – making him about 1 stroke better than scratch.

References:

Arccos (this author’s preferred stats app) application and data