M
MIND / MEMBERS’ TEE
tance was about 275 metres. Rory Mc- Ilroy led the tour in distance, averaging 326 yards (298m) per drive. Most of us will never be able to hit it 300 metres, but we can play an appropriate tee box that would make a course feel as it does for McIlroy. In a poll of Golf Digest members, we found they average about 204 metres off the tee, which is around the average for all male 15-handicap golfers. About 62 percent of these members play from tees longer than 5 500 metres, with 54 percent playing a course distance of 5 500 to 6 050 metres. How does that compare to McIlroy and the rest of the tour? If we take McIlroy’s driving distance as a percentage of a tour course’s distance (4.47 percent), then the average Golf Digest member would need to play from 4 560 metres to feel like McIlroy. However, our members are often playing from about 5 760, which is the equivalent of McIlroy playing an 8 400-metre course. To be fair, as one of the longest players on tour, McIlroy is a bit of an anomaly. How far do we need to play from to feel like an average tour player? Using the same maths, the typical Golf Digest member who hits it 204m would need to play a 4 950-metre course. The issue is, we’re not doing that. Of our members polled, just 12 percent play from under 5 250 metres. This disparity raises a few questions: Are we playing courses that are too long, or are tour pros playing courses that are too short? Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle, but some of our members have written to us and reject the premise altogether: “Distance is a distinct advantage, so we shouldn’t feel entitled to play from the same effective distance as pros,” their argu- ment goes. I sympathise with
The Easiest Way to Feel Like a Tour Pro These numbers suggest we all should move up a tee box By Drew Powell
A T THE INTERSECTION of the argument about the golf-ball rollback and the game’s slow-play epidemic is the debate over what course distance we should play. Move up a set of tees and we might play faster and shoot lower scores, but at what point do we sacrifice the integrity and challenge of the game? To better understand what tee boxes we should play from, we have contex- tualised just how short courses play for pros and how long they play for
handicap club golfers. The results are astounding and can be taken
two ways: Either tour pros need to play much longer courses, or we need to move up a set of tees – or three. Last year on the PGA Tour, the aver- age course was a shade under 6 700 metres (the Sunshine Tour is a similar figure), and the average driving dis-
THE DISTANCE YOU’D NEED TO PLAY TO FEEL LIKE RORY
this opinion, but con- sidering five- and six-hour rounds are common at many public courses, I say we look at the num- bers and reconsider our tee-box selections. Your handicap and sanity might thank me.
AVG DRIVING DISTANCE (IN METRES)
COURSE DISTANCE (IN METRES)
5 550 5 150 4 700 4 400 4 100
250 230 210 195 180
ILLUSTRATION BY KRISTIAN HAMMERSTAD
18 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JUNE 2024
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