While the distance debate continues to explode in professional golf, if there is a corresponding issue in the amateur game — excluding those elite amateurs with professional ambitions — it remains a lack of distance.
And with all due respect to your golf buddy who claims he hits it 290 yards on average, the numbers hardly bear that out as Lou Stagner of Decade Sports pointed out earlier this week.
Stagner, number-cruncher extraordinaire, dug deep into the USGA’s Distance Insights Report to extract exactly how long the average male amateur golfer hits their driver based on each’s handicap range, and the results may surprise you.
Average driving distance for amateur men golfers.
Average distance for all golfers is 217 yards.
Data is taken directly from the USGA Distance Insight Report: https://t.co/mMvp71PfYA pic.twitter.com/wEcq2vICSF
— Lou Stagner (Golf Stat Pro) (@LouStagner) October 11, 2020
Stagner found that the average driving distance for all amateur golfers is 217 yards. Unsurprisingly, the better the golfer’s handicap, the farther the group hit it on average with 0-6 handicaps averaging 245 yards off the tee and those 21-and-above poking it out there 190 yards.
While that’s a nice piece of information, no two golfers are created equally and age is a big factor. Piggybacking on Stagner’s handicap driving distance range, Gianni Magliocco of GolfWRX.com dug into some info accumulated by Arccos Golf, which conducts an annual study based on its players’ database of information, to see how age played a role in driving distance.
Again, to the surprise of few, the prime years of driving distance come between 20-39 with Father Time remaining undefeated even in the distance debate.
