There is a lot of talk these days about driver distance and its impact on the game. This is not really a new topic as the same discussions happened when Tiger first made a splash on the pro tour. Separate from the pro tours, this leaves many amateurs wondering if they are hitting their driver far enough. This article will take a look at the different ways we can answer that seemingly simple question.
How Far Are Amateur Golfers Hitting Their Drivers?
If you want to know how your driver distance stacks up against other recreational players, we gathered data from several resources:
Distance Insights Report from the USGA/R&AShot Scope Arccos
Between these three sources, we can see how far millions of golfers are hitting their drives by handicap level and age (spoiler alert: you may be surprised).
Distance Insight Report
The common assumption is that golfers are hitting it much further today than they did in the past. To study this, the USGA and R&A released their “Distance Insights” report earlier this year. While the report proved to be light on recommended solutions, it did provide a lot of data.
Here is their driving distance by handicap level since 1996:
This data comes from an R&A survey of club golfers. Unfortunately, their methods weren’t exactly “robust,” and the USGA either hasn’t collected or released this data for US golfers yet. However, the R&A data syncs up well with what we can gather from golf technology providers like Arccos and Shot Scope.
As you can see, amateur golfers aren’t exactly bombing the ball. The majority of players are not driving it farther than 220 yards on average, and that number has held stable for over 20 years.
Shot Scope Driver Distance Data
Shot Scope has been tracking millions of real golf shots around the world over the last several years. If you look at the distribution of driving distances amongst their users, you’ll see that only 29% can hit it more than 250 yards.
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By: Jon
Title: What Are Average Driver Distances for Amateur Golfers?
Sourced From: practical-golf.com/average-driving-distance-handicap-age/
Published Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2020 17:50:59 +0000
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Did you miss our previous article…
https://news-golf.com/golf-lessons/golf-swing-tips/golf-bunker-tip-gorgeous-greenside-bunker-shots-demand-a-high-finish/