[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Here is how the tour explains it, using Rickie Fowler's tee shot as an example.

Fowler hit his tee shot 330 yards on the 446-yard, par-4 before sticking his 116-yard approach shot 16 feet, 11 inches from the hole.

Tee shot: TPC Sawgrass' 18th hole is a 446-yard, par-4. The PGA TOUR's scoring average, or baseline, on a par-4 of that length is 4.100. Fowler hit his tee shot on No. 18 in the fairway, 116 yards from the hole. The TOUR scoring average from the fairway, 116 yards from the hole, is 2.825. He gained 0.275 strokes on his tee shot. Here's how:

Baseline for tee - Baseline for second shot - 1 = strokes gained: off-the-tee
4.100 - 2.825 = 1.275 - 1 = +0.275

One is subtracted from the difference between the two baselines to account for the shot that Fowler hit.


They measure the average to make from every distance in one inch increments from every type of lie. A player takes, on average, 3 shots to get down from 100 yards out in the rough compared to 3 shots on average from 170 in the fairway.

If you think about it from a risk reward perspective, hitting the ball that much farther doesn't really hurt you that much in the rough (of course, some rough *is* more penal than others), but you gain significant benefits if you hit it long in the fairway.

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

I get that hitting the fairway is everybody's goal (duh), but how do they calculate "strokes gained off the tee", drive distance and accuracy turning a par-5 into a par-4, a par-4 into a par-3, so those would be "1 stroke gained"?

NM, I found it in post 215 of this thread.