In recent years the quest for distance has been the most common theme in lowering scores and getting handicaps down. The easiest way to improve is to hit the ball further. The big headlines on Tour mainly centre around Bryson DeChambeau and the dramatic change in his body shape and driving distance and, with that, he now has two Majors.
In the women’s game there is less talk about the quest for extra yardage but there is also less data to measure the gains that are being made and the shorter clubs that players have in. But, if you were to look at Charley Hull for example, she works relentlessly on her game and physical shape and she has seen notable gains off the tee. In 2016 she averaged 261 yards off the tee, this year she was 14th in driving distance, averaging 272 yards.
In the amateur game Arccos owns the largest on-course dataset in the world across players of all skill levels. They have leveraged the data over one billion shots and over 180 million driver shots from par 4s and 5s and their findings from 2023 have now been released.
The headline figures centre around the average driving distances and the story here is that there aren’t the sweeping gains that we seem to be seeing in the professional game.
Male And Female Driving Distance – Last 5 Years
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Men | Women |
| 2019 | 222.2 yards | 177.6 yards |
| 2020 | 223.3 yards | 178.8 yards |
| 2021 | 221.7 yards | 179.7 yards |
| 2022 | 224.1 yards | 178.4 yards |
| 2023 | 225.0 yards | 178.1 yards |
In the women’s bracket the average distance was actually down on every year other than 2019. In 2018 it actually registered the second highest at 179.2 yards.
If we were to drill a bit deeper into the figures Arccos neatly breaks down the figures into different age ranges (20s, 30s, 40s and 50s) and seven handicap brackets, covering five shots at a time and then 30+.
Here we are interested in the 40s bracket and this shows that those with a handicap of 0.0-4.9 average an impressive 231 yards off the tee. From there we see fairly uniform drops in distance as the handicaps go up.
(Image credit: Arccos)
Average Driving Distance – Men And Women In Their 40s
If we were to compare the same age bracket of players in their 40s we can see how the amateur men and women stack up. Here it is noticeable that as the women’s handicaps go up there is a…
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