The Flaw of Stroke Gained

[2puttbogey]

The strokes gained has a flaw. It is not course specific. Handicap brings in factors of course difficulty, but strokes gained does not. The strokes gained method doesn’t bring in to play factors like wind, sand traps in your line, slopes, and other factors. The strokes gained method relies on data, and on tour the data is 100 plus  players on the same course on the same day. That’s not the case with the strokes gained method in real life. There’s not data except yours for the distance and lie, but not how the course is playing if you’re tracking on the golfmetrics app. My point is it generic and doesn’t consider factors a course may present. Is it useful yes, but  it has flaws like the “ traditional “ stats do.

Edited August 2, 2021 by 2puttbogey

[TR1PTIK]

While true, strokes gained is still CURRENTLY the easiest/best way to identify strengths and weakness on the golf course that I can think of. Perhaps someone knows of something else in existence that does a better job.

Also, there is a reason strokes gained omits a lot of these data points and that is for the sake of simplicity. Perhaps there will be a point somewhere down the road when it is possible to account for how different courses play with varying types of grass, length of grass, moisture content, wind speed, wind direction, temperature, barometric pressure, etc., etc., but it will take a significant technology bump before that's really possible. To try and account for every conceivable condition is an absolutely monumental task with millions and millions (if not trillions) of data points.

[cnosil]

Strokes gained is a collection of data across all environmental conditions and course difficulties and provides an average number of strokes.  The more data collected the more normalized it becomes.  As a player,  looking at the numbers over time will provide you an indication of where you are improving and not improving.    I also believe that some tools allow for you to select comparison data from specific courses. 
even if it is flawed, it is significantly better than any other data collection metric