The Distance Myth ?

[davidy1948]

Some years ago Trackman published an analysis they had done covering 11,000 golfers world wide, and came to the conclusion that the average golfer ( male ) has a swing speed of 93 miles per hour. That would imply an average drive of just over 200 yards.

 

My question is : does this reflect what you see on the course ? I know that GRWérs are all scratch and hit it over 300 yards, so probably don't ever play with 18 handicappers, but maybe one or two of you have ventured down to that level and can report on the experience ?

 

For myself I was initially highly sceptical of this number, so I took the liberty of measuring the swingspeed of some of my fellow club members on the first tee using a slightly less sophisticated technology, and came to the conclusion that the average was somewhere in the low 80's. Some of the seniors were down in the 60's ! I also measured drives during 2 club competitions, standing next to a fairway bunker at 200 yards distance from the tee, and only 10% of all players came anywhere close. My club I would say is about average in standard playing level, a couple of scratch players and plenty of single figure handicappers. 

 

My concern is that this number has been adopted worldwide as gospel by golf organisations and all kinds of decisions have been made on this basis. I just don't believe it's true and would welcome any imput from other contributors.

 

[GoGoErky]

There are lots of golfers at 100+ so when there average is 93 there are going to be golfers faster than that and slower than that.

 

How did you measure the golfers at your club? Also were they warmed up before the first tee or straight from the car to the first tee

[bladehunter]

I see usually two extremes. 100- 105 plus. Or the 65-80 crowd.  The average stated seems about right to me.  

[doctor220]

Averages are averages 

[SNIPERBBB]

So what's the myth we're talking about? 

[dashanks]

1 hour ago, davidy1948 said:

Some years ago Trackman published an analysis they had done covering 11,000 golfers world wide, and came to the conclusion that the average golfer ( male ) has a swing speed of 93 miles per hour. That would imply an average drive of just over 200 yards.

 

My question is : does this reflect what you see on the course ? I know that GRWérs are all scratch and hit it over 300 yards, so probably don't ever play with 18 handicappers, but maybe one or two of you have ventured down to that level and can report on the experience ?

 

For myself I was initially highly sceptical of this number, so I took the liberty of measuring the swingspeed of some of my fellow club members on the first tee using a slightly less sophisticated technology, and came to the conclusion that the average was somewhere in the low 80's. Some of the seniors were down in the 60's ! I also measured drives during 2 club competitions, standing next to a fairway bunker at 200 yards distance from the tee, and only 10% of all players came anywhere close. My club I would say is about average in standard playing level, a couple of scratch players and plenty of single figure handicappers. 

 

My concern is that this number has been adopted worldwide as gospel by golf organisations and all kinds of decisions have been made on this basis. I just don't believe it's true and would welcome any imput from other contributors.

 

Just googling around, it seems that right off the bat, you are starting with some bad information.  All the charts I saw would indicate that a swing speed of 93 MPH would result in a much longer drive, approx. 220 carry and 240 total.  A 200 yard drive would result from something closer to an 80MPH SS which I would think is closer to the average for all golfers.  That also corroborates your results.

[Golf_Goof]

1 hour ago, davidy1948 said:

For myself I was initially highly sceptical of this number, so I took the liberty of measuring the swingspeed of some of my fellow club members on the first tee using a slightly less sophisticated technology, and came to the conclusion,,,

 

Speaking of skepticism,,, 

[st1800e]

2 hours ago, davidy1948 said:

measuring the swingspeed of some of my fellow club members on the first tee using a slightly less sophisticated technology, and came to the conclusion that the average was somewhere in the low 80's. Some of the seniors were down in the 60's ! I also measured drives during 2 club competitions, standing next to a fairway bunker at 200 yards distance from the tee, and only 10% of all players came anywhere close.

Too many other outside variables  to dissect here, but your sample size is minuscule compared to “worldwide’ .  
Would be similar to asking those teeing off what brand/type of ball they play and extrapolating that to what “golfers worldwide” are playing.  

[Hawkeye77]

2 hours ago, davidy1948 said:

Some years ago Trackman published an analysis they had done covering 11,000 golfers world wide, and came to the conclusion that the average golfer ( male ) has a swing speed of 93 miles per hour. That would imply an average drive of just over 200 yards.

 

My question is : does this reflect what you see on the course ? I know that GRWérs are all scratch and hit it over 300 yards, so probably don't ever play with 18 handicappers, but maybe one or two of you have ventured down to that level and can report on the experience ?

 

For myself I was initially highly sceptical of this number, so I took the liberty of measuring the swingspeed of some of my fellow club members on the first tee using a slightly less sophisticated technology, and came to the conclusion that the average was somewhere in the low 80's. Some of the seniors were down in the 60's ! I also measured drives during 2 club competitions, standing next to a fairway bunker at 200 yards distance from the tee, and only 10% of all players came anywhere close. My club I would say is about average in standard playing level, a couple of scratch players and plenty of single figure handicappers. 

 

My concern is that this number has been adopted worldwide as gospel by golf organisations and all kinds of decisions have been made on this basis. I just don't believe it's true and would welcome any imput from other contributors.

 

What did you measure swing speed with?

[stryper]

1 hour ago, dashanks said:

Just googling around, it seems that right off the bat, you are starting with some bad information.  All the charts I saw would indicate that a swing speed of 93 MPH would result in a much longer drive, approx. 220 carry and 240 total.  A 200 yard drive would result from something closer to an 80MPH SS which I would think is closer to the average for all golfers.  That also corroborates your results.

The charts I see don’t factor in smash factors or launch angles, or if they do it’s “optimum.”  How often does the average driver actually achieve these optimum conditions?  My guess is not very often, which would account for  the shorter average, observable distances.

[braincramp52]

1 hour ago, Hawkeye77 said:

What did you measure swing speed with?

I multiply the number of trees I hit by 30.5. That seems to be fairly accurate. 😂

[Hawkeye77]

The actual results might be helpful. 
 

https://blog.trackmangolf.com/performance-of-the-average-male-amateur/

 

When it was done an average distance off the tee of 214 yards hardly seems surprising. 
 

Anecdotal results with questionable equipment isn’t really busting or revealing any myth. Most of the guys I play with are in that largest swing speed group of a bit above 90 on average, variety of ages all over 50 and plenty of us can hit it 250 plus. But still a tiny sample size. 
 

Sigh, we’re so average overall. 

Edited March 28 by Hawkeye77

[596]

Data used seems a bit off. A 93 swing speed will produce well over 200.  I'm at 87 and average near 220 with a few outliers at 250.  

[KD1]

4 hours ago, davidy1948 said:

I took the liberty of measuring the swingspeed of some of my fellow club members

 

Are you in the US? I could imagine a certain barrier to entry ($$$) might bias your sample population toward the lower end of swing speed. Maybe I'm wrong...

But in my limited experience, the rando bombers I get paired up with at public courses tend to be young, athletic, and broke.

Edited March 28 by KD1

[Soloman1]

 

 

[Golfonthemind]

Somewhat agree. Thinking back the shortest person I play with hits driver around 215. On the opposite end I somehow keep getting paired up with people who can carry driver over 315 which I honestly kind of thought wasn’t a real thing outside of Rory and long drive people. 

[byoung14]

Sounds like you know the actual truth but you don’t want to accept it. Comparing a handful of cherry picked golfers to a report where data from 11,000 different golfers was taken is flawed thinking.

[Jayjay_theweim_guy]

4 hours ago, SNIPERBBB said:

So what's the myth we're talking about? 

Guessing that, while maybe the TM mean swing speed is correct (just for the sake of argument), the myth is that it's a bell curve-shaped distribution, where maybe it should instead be viewed as a bi-lobed distribution?  With medians for both lobes at ~100-105 and 75-80 respectively?

 

I genuinely don't know.  What does the Arccos or similar datasets say for drive distance (once you discard the 0 and similar outliers) and maybe we can back into swing speed from those distances?

[Soloman1]

all that really matters is that everyone wants to hit their drives longer, regardless of the number. 😉 

[mgoblue83]

The only myth regarding distance is that so many people just accept swinging slowly instead of doing relatively easy things to improve speed. A healthy male under 50 years old should be swinging over 100 mph with minimal effort. If not, they either have physical limitations, a terrible swing or simply have not tried to increase speed.

 

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is a direct correlation between handicap and swing speed. Better players swing faster in almost all cases and its extremely hard to be competitive as a short hitter.

 

If you did your same "study" at a higher level event the speeds and distances would drastically increase.

 

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

3 hours ago, stryper said:

The charts I see don’t factor in smash factors or launch angles, or if they do it’s “optimum.”  How often does the average driver actually achieve these optimum conditions?  My guess is not very often, which would account for  the shorter average, observable distances.

 

I do think this contributes to a pretty wide disparity between "what an average amateur thinks they drive the ball" vs "average driving distance for that same amateur."

 

Because as a higher cap when I think about how far I drive the ball, I don't think about my average. I think about my average on good strikes. Not necessarily "perfect" strikes, but good. My swing speed with driver is ~100 mph, so that means that if I hit the ball decently, I'm going to hit it between 230-250. So I'd probably tell you that my "average" drive distance is ~240. 

 

My speed is limited by my mechanics, not my physical ability, so occasionally I'll sequence everything JUST right and be in that 260-270 range. But FAR more often that that I'll mishit one, or duck hook, or not get the face closed and it's a high wipey push fade, etc, and it goes <230. And some of the "bad ones" are bad enough that I'd be pretty sure that my actual "average" drive distance is <230. 

 

I'm sure when you look at a sample size of 11,000 golfers and you don't filter out those bad strikes, it brings those averages WAY down. 

[Hawkeye77]

This thread reminds why I dumped those GPS buttons on the ends of my clubs providing actual yardages. 

[Nard_S]

How many golfer's swing 100 a foot behind ball?

[Rosco1216]

Averaging swing speed of the everyone from those who are 80 and/or don’t really play golf but randomly maybe once a year to the top long drive professionals is like trying to find the average top speed of all motor vehicles. Like you have a 30 year old farm/feed truck with 3 gears and probably multiple cylinders not firing maybe tops out around 40 mph in the same pool as a top fuel dragsters doing 300 plus in a quarter mile. 

[Shilgy]

4 hours ago, 596 said:

Data used seems a bit off. A 93 swing speed will produce well over 200.  I'm at 87 and average near 220 with a few outliers at 250.  

I was about to say how impressed I was that you were hitting it 220 at age 87…..now where are those reading glasses?🧐

[KD1]

1 hour ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

I do think this contributes to a pretty wide disparity between "what an average amateur thinks they drive the ball" vs "average driving distance for that same amateur."

 

Because as a higher cap when I think about how far I drive the ball, I don't think about my average. I think about my average on good strikes. Not necessarily "perfect" strikes, but good. My swing speed with driver is ~100 mph, so that means that if I hit the ball decently, I'm going to hit it between 230-250. So I'd probably tell you that my "average" drive distance is ~240. 

 

My speed is limited by my mechanics, not my physical ability, so occasionally I'll sequence everything JUST right and be in that 260-270 range. But FAR more often that that I'll mishit one, or duck hook, or not get the face closed and it's a high wipey push fade, etc, and it goes <230. And some of the "bad ones" are bad enough that I'd be pretty sure that my actual "average" drive distance is <230. 

 

I'm sure when you look at a sample size of 11,000 golfers and you don't filter out those bad strikes, it brings those averages WAY down. 

 

Hey man, 250 yd hang time with 120 yd curve to the right is still 250 yds!!

[dashanks]

6 hours ago, stryper said:

The charts I see don’t factor in smash factors or launch angles, or if they do it’s “optimum.”  How often does the average driver actually achieve these optimum conditions?  My guess is not very often, which would account for  the shorter average, observable distances.

Smash factor, swing speed, whatever you've got, I'll agree that "average is average" and I would say the average driving distance for all golfers could be around 200 yards.   And again, it hard to get a perspective because everyone around here is flying it 317 yards.   Or so they believe.

[Klubster]

When I was younger and using 350cc era drivers, I would drop the ball right at the 250 marker with minimal effort.  When I stepped on it with a Scotty Scheffler type swing, I could bring that down to around 230 yards.  Swing speed ain't everything.

[SNIPERBBB]

3 hours ago, dashanks said:

.   And again, it hard to get a perspective because everyone around here is flying it 317 yards.   Or so they believe.

That's really the only distance mutt, what people believe how far they hit the ball. 

 

One of the things any long term reader of this forum should know is that Average is such a meaningless figure as its so context dependent.  Even when comparing distance averages amongst different handicap groupings is of limited value. As you move towards higher skilled players the dispersion of averages will tighten up, you'll have some outliers coming from the shorter end of the distance chart. As handicaps get higher the dispersion is all over the place and your outliers will be on the long end of the distance chart. 

[jonsnow]

On 3/28/2024 at 7:12 AM, doctor220 said:

Averages are averages 

Most people are average. I can prove it mathematically...