If you want to lower your scores reducing the number of awful shots should be one of your key priorities.
In his paper “Assessing Golfer Performance Using Golfmetrics”, Mark Broadie (the creator of Strokes Gained) says that strokes gained can be used to identify the best and worst (or awful) shots in a round.
Using strokes gained (or shot value), Broadie defines an awful shot as a shot with a shot value with of less than -0.8 and a great shot as one with a shot value of more than +0.8.
The awful shots could come from bad swings or from a strategy that is too risky (attempting shots with a low probability of success).
In Broadie’s words, "an overlooked golf performance measure is consistency and consistent golfers have few very poor shots and few 'blowup' holes".
For amateur golfers a significant contributor to high scores is a relatively small number of awful shots. An inconsistent golfer may find reducing the number of awful shots an easy path to lower scores.
Being an economist, Mark Broadie performed a regression between the number of awful shots per round (A) and the golfer's score (S) and got the following formula:
A = 0.24 * S - 17.1
This means that for a round of 80 shots (S) the benchmark is 2.1 awful shots ( A = 0.24 × 80 - 17.1). In the following table you can see the number of awful shots you should expect for several total scores.
How many awful shots do you have per round? Are you above or below the benchmark? In any case, if you want to lower your scores reducing the number of awful shots should be one of your key priorities.
When you enter a round in golfity, we will calculate how many awful shots you made and compare it to the benchmark.
The PGA Tour measures strokes gained in four different categories
Mark Broadie is the creator of strokes gained, the best metric to analyze golfer's performance
What is putts gained and how do you calculate it? Read on to learn about the one and only metric to measure how well you are putting.
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.
Everybody talks about strokes gained but do you really know what it is?
