What the latest data reveals about average golfers’ driving distances | Golf Equipment: Clubs, Balls, Bags

Arccos, the GPS sensor shot-tracking app, has released its own annual distance report on average golfers, and while it reveals a lot, its biggest nugget is perhaps also the most obvious: the USGA and R&A don’t have to take the ball back for average golfers soon.

According to the company, the latest report reflects 20 million rider strokes and tracks distance performance by handicap, age and gender. However you look at the numbers, there doesn’t seem to be a compelling need for every course in the world to start adding tees to lengthen their layouts – although they might want to add a few shorter tees.

The average male golfer mileage in 2022 was about 226 yards, about five feet up from 2021 but half a yard down from 2018. The average female mileage for Arccos users in 2022 was down to 177 yards, down four yards from the 2022 year 2020.

Among the other not-so-surprising but still disheartening revelations: You get shorter (much shorter) as you age. The lower your handicap, the farther you hit it. According to the data, the average 12-handicapper loses 32 yards of distance between his 20s and 60s, and 40 yards between his 30s and 70s. It’s even worse for scratch players. They lose 37 yards between their 30s and their 60s. (Unless, of course, their name is Bernhard Langer. He actually gained 16 feet.) Across all handicaps, the average decrease in driving distance from your 20s to your 70s is 23 percent, which is much better for those in their 70s than a potential drop of 100 percent.

When it came to handicaps, the differences were even clearer. Example: The average scratch player, regardless of age, was about 50 yards longer than the average 22-handicapper. The biggest jump came when you got out of the single digit handicap. The average for those handicapped under 10 was about 250 yards, while for those handicapped in their teens the average mileage was about 218 yards.

One consolation the old can hold over the heads of the young bucks: the Arccos results suggest you become more accurate as you age. Across almost every handicap, Arccos golfers hit more than 50 percent of their fairways in their 60’s and 70’s. Aside from scratch players, no age group or handicap hits more than half of their fairways in their teens, 20’s, 30’s or 40’s.

Much of this was true of the women in the Arccos survey. Women in their 50s were about 100 feet shorter than women in their 20s across all handicaps. Across all age groups, women with a low single-digit handicap averaged about 60 yards longer than women with a handicap in their upper 20s. According to the USGA, the average handicap index for a female golfer is 28.0.

While the average Arccos user may be slightly better than the typical average golfer, the Arccos data offers the most vivid portrait of the statistical state of the recreational game. The USGA and R&A annual distance report focuses on elite professionals, and while it included data on golfers’ average distance in its early years, that information hasn’t been tracked since 2019. That year, 215.6 yards (for male golfers) were recorded. or 15.6 meters longer than in 1996. These numbers are based on approximately 2,000 shots. Meanwhile, Arccos, which reportedly tracks 650 million shots, has watched the average men’s driving distance fluctuate from a high of 226.4 yards in 2018 to a low of 224.3 yards in 2021. The 2022 average of 225.9 is 0.8 yards longer than the average over the previous four years.