Today, the PGA Tour is officially rolling out a new statistical metric: strokes gained: tee-to-green. In addition, the Tour will tally a combined “strokes gained: total”, which is an aggregate of the strokes gained-putting figure and strokes gained: tee-to-green.

As Steve Evans, the Tour’s head of Information Systems and overseer of the ShotLink system told Luke Kerr-Dineen of Golf Digest, “This is the next step of our evolution…we’re trying to create new performance metrics that are more telling than some of the current statistics.”

A report from PGATour.com indicates Mark Broadie of Columbia University (the man behind strokes gained-putting) initially developed the stat. A group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was led by professor Steven Graves, further refined the metric.

Strokes gained: tee-to-green lumps together all non-putts and sets that number relative to a field average the same way that strokes gained-putting does with putts.

The Tour has unofficially been tabulating strokes gained: tee-to-green for part of the 2013-2014 season.

As John Paul Newport of The Wall Street Journal, wrote back in March:

“If you’re looking for one simple number to explain John Senden’s victory last week at the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship, try 2.17. That was the Australian journeyman’s “strokes gained-tee to green” statistic for the week. It beat by more than two strokes his season-average strokes gained-tee to green stat of 0.04 of a stroke per round.”

How does strokes gained: tee-to-green give a better indication of quality play than, say, greens in regulation? Luke Kerr-Dineen highlighted a pitfall of that metric:

“If Adam Scott, for example, only plays in the toughest events — events where it’s harder to hit greens in regulation — his greens-hit percentage will likely be lower than someone who only plays in events where it’s easier to hit greens. That essentially masks the fact that Adam Scott is the superior ball-striker of the two.”

In other words, as our Rich Hunt would surely agree, the best data is that which is relative.

When a golfer wins a tournament, we expect him to have fared well in strokes gained: tee-to-green. For example, Rory McIlroy was 2.8 strokes better than the field, tee-to-green, in his WGC-Bridgestone Invitational victory.

However, the figure offers some truly interesting insights that go beyond pointing out the obvious fact that the guy who won the tournament played better than the rest of the field.

As the Tour relates,

“In the opening round of the The Players Championship this year, Roberto Castro shot a 63, which was nine shots better than the field average of 72.01 that day.

Of those nine shots, Castro was eight shots better than the field from tee to green. He hit 13 of 14 fairways, and 15 of 18 greens, and averaged a field-leading 21-feet, 6 inches to the pin on all approach shots. He hit seven approach shots inside 15 feet and averaged nearly 12 feet closer to the pin than the field average of 34 feet.

Castro’s performance from tee to green that day allowed him to become the first player in the ShotLink era (starting in 2004) to shoot 65 or better at TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course without making a putt from outside 10 feet.

To illustrate the value of the strokes gained: total figure, the Tour provides the following example:

“Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were paired together in the final round of the 2012 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Mickelson went on to shoot a final-round 64 while Woods finished 11 shots higher with a 3-over 75.

The largest difference between their rounds came on the greens. Mickelson outperformed the field by 4.6 strokes on the greens while Tiger lost 4.4 strokes. For the round, Mickelson was 9 strokes better than Woods on the greens. Meanwhile, from tee to green, Mickelson outperformed the field by +3.1 strokes while Tiger was at +1.1, a two-stroke difference between the two players.

Combine Mickelson’s nine-stroke advantage in putting with his two-stroke advantage from tee to green, and his 11-shot difference equals the difference between his score and Tiger’s score.”

Of course, all of the strokes gained metrics are evolving and none are without issues. As Steve Evans told John Paul Newport, there are a few issues related to strokes gained: tee-to-green Broadie and company are working to sort out. On such issue is short-sided shots from around the green. Obviously, a short-sided pitch or chip is more difficult than one where a player has a wealth of green to work with. Thus, that information needs to be factored in when evaluating the average proximity to the hole on a shot from inside 15 feet.

It may seem elementary, but the metric substantiates things about winning golf we already suspected to be true. As Newport wrote earlier this year based on the data from Senden’s win, “To win, a player can’t seriously misfire in any aspect of his game for the week, but there’s almost always one particular area where he shoots lights out.”

While the above doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “drive for show, putt for dough,” it’s more indicative of what it really takes to win on the PGA Tour and is likely the tip of the data iceberg we’ll be privy to thanks to strokes gained: tee-to-green.