Left hand going forward and pulling, counts as a stroke. The right hand is a stroke. One stroke cycle counts as two strokes in our lingo here (NZ) We used to have a swim drill, swim golf. Stokes and seconds to do 50m short course added together is your score. I generally managed low 60's thanks to a low stroke count. Working hard, I could get to 58's but could only manage 2-3 at that pace before I'd run out of breath. Haydn would swim 8 strokes per length. 4x left hand plus 4x right hand for 25 metres. When open water swimming became popular about 2005, Haydn entered a bunch and won everything he entered. I remember one race, about 2100m from the end, he rolled onto his back, did about 6 strokes of backstroke, to see where the chasers were. Then he rolled back over and cruised to the finish, with the chasers still about 50m behind! The guy who finally managed to beat him (Kane, became a part time coach for us as well)

My coach was Haydn Woolley. He did 43:30 at IMNZ in about 1999 or 2000 I think. It wasn't official because he pulled out about 1/3 of the way through the run, from memory.