The strokes gained-putting stat that the PGA Tour rolled out in 2011 is clearly the best way to identify top putters. Nos. 1 and 2 last year: Greg Chalmers and Steve Stricker.

It's also the beginning of a new wave of analytic tools offering deeper insights into how golf skills are interconnected and which ones are most important in producing better scores.

Mark Broadie, one of the brains behind strokes gained-putting, has written a book that extends the strokes-gained concept to the rest of the game, from tee to green. "Every Shot Counts," due out in March from Gotham, is chockablock with telling stats about Tour players and convincing debunkments of conventional wisdom, such as the primacy of putting, the relative importance of driving accuracy versus length and the virtues of laying up.

Broadie is a Columbia Business School professor who specializes in financial risk management and who plays to a four handicap. He bases his research on the ShotLink data the Tour has been collecting about every shot by every player in most tournaments since 2003, as well as similar data about amateur players he has recorded since 2005.

To a surprising degree, he found, the skills and tendencies that separate top pros from the middle of the pack are what separate golfers at every level. Just as superstars like Luke Donald and Justin Rose have used strokes-gained analysis to improve their scoring, Broadie suggests ways amateurs can do the same.