In my experience of coaching thousands of golfers over many years I would say that the majority think they hit the ball further than they do. 

It wouldn't be uncommon for a student to tell me they drive it 280-300 consistently yet when I watch them hit it, clearly that isn't the case.  Most likely they have hit 'a' drive said distance but certainly not as an average.

So I thought I would break down some stats for you from the best players in the world along with data captured by a popular GPS tracking system using tens of thousands of golfers stats.

So let's start with the best in the world - how far on average are they driving the ball.

At the date of writing this blog, Rory McIlroy sits at the top of the PGA TOUR driving distance leaderboard with an average yardage of 325 yards.  This is the average of 104 drives hit.

Last place is Brian Stuard at 271 yards, the average of 106 yards.  More familiar names such as Luke Donald (282y/82) and Zac Johnson (290y/124) can also be found towards the bottom of the list.

Here are the top 10 longest drivers on the PGA TOUR as of July 2023.

The full list can be found HERE

Now for us mere mortals

With the introduction of GPS tracking systems such as Arccos and Shotscope, it has never been easier to track your stats.  And it's these stats I'm going to use to demonstrate the yardages of the typical club golfer across varying handicap ranges.  See the table below:

Shot Scope use what is called a ‘Performance Average’ this removes all outliers (good and bad) when calculating shot distances. It provides the golfer with an average distance, if they were to hit the shot well. 

From the graph we can clearly see that as driving distance increases, handicap decreases. So if you can hit it further, or gain 5-10 yards off the tee (on average) the chances are you will become a better golfer. This does not mean you need to swing faster…. An average takes into account the best and the worst. In the case of higher handicaps, it may almost mean the opposite – perhaps a slower more controlled swing will produce a more consistent strike, which also leads to more distance. Each golfer is unique, however there are many studies and articles out there that support the fact that hitting the ball further is advantageous to the golfer.

The graph also shows that it is actually only golfers who have a handicap of 15 and below that average more than 200 yards off the tee with their Driver. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is only the scratch golfer who averages over 250 yards off the tee with their Driver. Of course as with every data set there are outliers to this but for the purpose of this article we are merely talking about the average 5, 10, 15 handicap and so on.