The strokes gained concept, and its resulting evolution, has changed professional golf. It's given PGA Tour (and now European Tour, and hopefully soon LPGA Tour) players a better sense of how their performance gives them an edge on the field.
Strokes gained evaluates performance off the tee, on approach shots, around the green and putting, and the total number gives a golfer a total idea of why they are where they are on the leaderboard.
As the concept has gained traction and and widespread acceptance, more and more golf-performance analysis tools are offering strokes-gained data and analysis to their users. Now 18Birdies users are able to get a hold of strokes-gained data for their own games when they use the platform to track their rounds.
The introduction of strokes gained data is part of a major platform update which also overhauls how 18Birdies users score and keep track of their round in the app, whether on their phones or the Apple Watch.
The 18Birdies team has made tracking scoring easier using the GPS function, giving you a better mapping of your shots through a hole. The interface is also easier to use for tracking scoring, side bets, other stat tracking and adding pictures and video to each hole.
This is an exciting change for golfers who were already using the 18Birdies platform to kepe track of their golf performance. Of course, any golfer who chooses 18Birdies for tracking their game will get more out of the platform the more data they put into it. But getting strokes gained data without additional hardware is a big attraction for lots of players who aren't prepared to buy into a new ecosystem.
Android users of the 18Birdies app already have access to this new interface with the latest update, and Apple iOS users should be getting their updates soon.