The concept of strokes gained has become an important one on the PGA Tour. Using ShotLink data dating back to 2003, the PGA Tour has been able to work with Mark Broadie, inventor of the concept and a professor at Columbia University, to not only retrofit the concept back now some 15 years but to also segment out strokes gained into separate component pieces, including off the tee, on the approach, putting and around the green.
Up until now, however, that data has not been available on the European Tour. Finally, the European Tour has unveiled this week a new trove of strokes gained data that should be welcome news for fans, fantasy golf players, bettors and players alike.
On the European Tour website, strokes gained is available for the same component areas as the PGA Tour, using the standardized concept. In each strokes gained category, players are ranked based on their average strokes gained per round in each category.
This is great data for European Tour fans who can now have a better understanding of how players perform on the litany courses played throughout a global schedule.
As this dataset is out for longer, expect comparisons between strokes gained on the PGA Tour against the European Tour to perhaps get a better sense of difficulty of courses relative to the two tours.
