Plateauing Distance And The 2012 PGA Tour Average
The NY Times' Karen Crouse takes on the delicate subject of technology and tradition and I got very excited to read that the R&A's driving distance plateau talk was debunked using a little different method than the governing bodies use: the average of the 50th ranked player.
Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, said his organization and the U.S.G.A. issued a joint statement a decade ago saying they were prepared to take action if distances increased any more. “Distances have actually plateaued since then,” he said in the same conference call.
The PGA Tour statistics tell another story. In 1997, the 50th-ranked player averaged 272.3 yards. By 2002, the distance had risen to 285.0. In 2012, it was 294.7.
Typically the governing bodies will point out that in 2002 the average was 279.8 and in the case of the most recent year, the PGA Tour driving distance average was 289.1.
Because a 9.8 yard discrepancy is much more palatable than a 22.4 yard increase!
Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 08:15 PM
Reader Comments (24)
That may be a meaningful piece of data
Cheers
You can't make this stuff up.
I believe shrinks call it"willful dissonance"...an unwillingness to objectively look at relevant facts. (AKA: Head in the sand defense mechanisms).
my bad...a tad early for me. Snow's on the ground today here...no more sweeping dew till April...D'OH!
1998 269.0
1999 271.2
2000 273.3
2001 280.0
2002 280.8
2003 286.6
2004 287.2
2005 287.0
2006 287.0
2007 285.8
2008 286.1
2009 287.1
2010 286.6
2011 289.2
2012 288.7
And yes; is there a single course on the PGA Tour which has been in continuous use or near-continuous use since 1998, where there has not been a measurable reduction width and less-forgiving landing areas?
The tour guys do hit it a long way and the young guys coming through are nearly all very athletic. There's still plenty top players, Donald, Furyk, Zach Johnson to name a few, very competitive despite certainly not being long.
And the 200+ 7 irons KLG sees-firstly there's an athlete with great technique hitting that shot hard for sure, but realise that the number on the bottom of the club may say 7, but modern lofts are 3 to 4 degrees stronger than 20 years ago, the player may well have had them cranked a little more too, and the club maybe 0.5" or so longer-effectively it's a closer to a 6 or even a 5 iron.
Let's get this issue in perspective. .
I agree with you on equipment-we have nearly reached the max with the driver and ball under the present regs.My point would be that we should have arrived at this many years and many yards ago!
Skill-give a talented player a sweet-spot the size of a hens egg and he/she will hardly ever miss it.All the players on Tour now are good so miss hits are quite rare(not all go straight though)Hugely gifted drivers like Greg Norman had a distinct advantage over not so good ones (like me!) I think its a great shame that that difference has been eroded so.
I also agree with you that since the Pro V's introduction, after huge distance gains, there have been only incremental moves upward to more distance. There have only been incremental distance increases becasue, as you rightly point out, there have been only incremental changes in multilayer urethane balls and 460cc titanium alloy drivers during that same time.
But the Joint Statement of Principles that we can sometimes force Dawson and Davis to recognize didn't allow for "incremental distance increases." The Joint Statement mentioned ANY significant upward change in driving distance. And that, we have seen. We've seen enough to know that the problem isn't agronomy or player fitness or player size or anything else. The problem is the equipment used to drive the golf ball.
Chuck, I agree that the trend of radical changes to our courses is worrying. That said I worry that over egging the distant gains only encourages this. I see this at famous courses but also at lots of wonderful members clubs, where committees make ill considered changes to "keep pace", even though for 99% of their members the courses are perfectly challenging, and long, enough.
The article Geoff posted contained this quote: "The PGA Tour statistics tell another story. In 1997, the 50th-ranked player averaged 272.3 yards. By 2002, the distance had risen to 285.0. In 2012, it was 294.7." That statement makes comparisons of 1997, 2002 and 2012 using ONLY PGATour data.
The following posted in the next comment box uses both PGA Tour and European Tour data for every year since 1998 - the year that ET stats begin on their website.
Notice the two comparisons: 2012 vs '02 and 2012 vs '03. The first comparison - whether for average, median or 50th on the lists distances shows increases of between 7.9 and 8.6 yards - not a lot different than the author's numbers which suggest a 9.7 yard increase over that time period based solely on the difference calculated for the 50 ranked player on PT in those two years.
However, when you move forward and base the change from 2003 to 12 instead of 2002 to 12, my three comparisons drop to only a 2.1 to 2.3 yard increase. In other words - the vast majority of what the author made look like a 10 year gain - actually occurred in a single year from 2002 to 2003. Since then all three data series have essentially plateaued - exactly as claimed by USGA and R&A.
As you suggested, some of that plateau may have to do with hitting less club on measured driving holes, but the difference in what I see AS A PLATEAU in distance and what the author and Geoff attempt to portray a "10 year uptrend" is simply the statistical difference in picking 2002 vs 2003 as the base for the comparison. I view 2003 as the last big jump in a shift that occurred from the late 90's to that date. Not as part of a continued shift that has continued since that time.
1998 269.0 268.8 272.7
1999 271.2 270.4 275.0
2000 273.3 273.2 277.6
2001 280.0 279.7 284.2
2002 280.8 280.5 285.9
2003 286.6 286.5 291.8
2004 287.2 287.3 292.1
2005 287.0 286.5 291.7
2006 287.0 286.3 292.8
2007 285.8 285.6 291.5
2008 286.1 285.9 291.4
2009 287.1 286.4 292.3
2010 286.6 286.5 291.5
2011 289.2 289.0 294.6
2012 288.7 289.1 294.2
'12vs'02 7.9 8.6 8.3
'12vs'03 2.1 2.6 2.4
These numbers show that, despite all the flak aimed at Mr Dawson and the R & A by the author and others, essentially he's correct-distances have plateaued over the last 10 years.
What you don't see is how many ''drives' are with a 3 or 4 wood, a hybrid., or a long iron, thus lowering the distance on MANY players, and making the completely BOGUS stats.
Actually WATCH how far a drive with a driver goes today compared to 10 years ago. Get real.
While I agree that hitting less club over time "could" distort average distance data, do you have any stats that suggest that players are actually hitting less club off the tee year after year? I was disappointed when the players complained and the tour dropped a plan many years ago to add club selection to their shot link data. I'd like to know how far a typical driver, vs 3 wood, vs hybrid traveled in 2012 vs each of the past 10-15 years. I think it would help us all to understand how distances are changing.
It would help if the tours simply asked each player to report his club selection on the two measured holes during each round. But, I don't know of any broad survey source for that type of data - do you?
And, without it, don't we have to ask why - with typical course lengths for the pros slowly growing over time as they build new tees, etc. - that players are "choosing" (your basic argument) to only hit the ball the same distance as they did about nine years ago? Why, with typical course lengths slowly expanding, would they "choose" to only hit it about the same distance as they did nine years ago?
If a typical 380 or so ranked ET and PT pros play an average of around 80 measured rounds per year and two measured drives per round, that totals around 60,000 measured drives per year - a very large sample which very likely measures (quite accurately) almost exactly how long these two memberships ARE ACTUALLY hitting the ball.
Why wouldn't they air out what you assume to be continued improvements in technology that gives them much greater potential length?
Is it all about fear of narrower fairways and more risk in hitting it long? It might be, but is it?
Whatever the reason, typical distances off the tee on those roughly 60,000 measured drives per year have barely increased over the past nine years or so. Why are they giving up on bomb and gouge - if indeed they are?
I don't know if the tour methodology for driving stat is different from 10 years ago? and I've not seen evidence that more players are leavening their driver in the bag. If anyone knows otherwise please let us know.
The ball is limited and has changed little since the original ProV1 came out in early 2000s and the driver is more or less at a limit now too. Manufacturers would love to claim their latest driver/ball goes x yards further, but they can't. They sell adjustability, pretty colours but the performance improvements have been marginial in the last 10 years.
Distance gains in the last 10 years, and we can go round in circles on how much this has been in reality, I'd suggest are as much to do with improving and changing techniques, with more emphasis on power, which goes along with improved fitness and better understanding of golf specific training among the new generation of players.
SGarrett, thanks for adding some rational analysis to this debate