I designed this Strokes Gained Putting Calculator to help you track your putting improvement. Simply follow the instructions below and then click on calculate and the strokes gained putting calculator will total your putts and tell you how you compared to the PGA Tour average.
CLICK HERE TO OPEN THE STROKES GAINED PUTTING CALCULATOR
How to use the Strokes Gained PUtting Calculator
- Determine the Length of your stride (Example: 1 step = 3 feet.)
- Count the Steps from Ball to Hole when your ball is on the green.
- Multiply the number of steps by the length of your stride. (Example: 7 steps x 3 feet/stride = 21 feet.)
- Enter how many putts it took you to complete the hole.
- At the end of your round click the calculate button.
what is strokes gained putting?
Strokes Gained Putting measures how you putted compared to other golfers. In this calculator we compare to PGA tour pros because I believe putting is the one area where you can play almost as well as the tour pros and sometimes as well as they do. Strokes Gained Putting is calculated by comparing the number of strokes you take to complete a hole, to the average number of strokes a PGA tour player would average from the same distance.
For instance, Pros make 40% of their putts from 10 feet. (They even 3 putt from this distance on rare occasion.) The average number of putts PGA tour players take from 10 feet is 1.61. So, if you make a 10 footer you gain 0.61 strokes on that hole. If you 2 putt you lose 0.39. A good starting goal is to be a negative 1.0 or negative 1.5 in strokes gained putting. Then keep working on improving your putting until you actually get to positive numbers. On this calculator positive numbers are green and negative numbers are red.
Strokes Gained Putting Vs. Total PUtts
We always want our total putts in a round to be 30 or less. But the number of putts you take in a round isn’t necessarily the best measurement of how well you putted; the distance of putts is a huge factor.
For instance I recently had a round where I had 26 putts in an 18 hole round. But I didn’t hit many greens and so was chipping and pitching from just off the green and most of my putts were under 6 feet. My strokes gained putting was negative -0.13 A few days later I had a round with 32 putts and my strokes gained putting for the round was an insanely good + 1.97. ( I hit 15 of 18 greens in regulation but had really long putts–I two-putted 6 times from over 60 feet. That was a much better putting day even though I had more total putts.
Simply put, strokes gained putting doesn’t reward you for making putts that you should make most of the time, but it rewards you for sinking putts that usually require 2 strokes to hole out and for not 3 putting from distances over 50 feet.
My goal is to be under 30 putts with at least + 0.25 strokes gained putting. When I accomplish this, I consider it a good day of putting.
Want to improve your Strokes Gained Putting?
Learn to control speed and distance. You will reduce 3 putts if you do. Here’s my favorite drills to learn speed and distance control.
Here’s a good article that explains strokes gained putting in more detail.