American Golfers Among Longest Drivers in the World

Regardless of whether you are aiming to win a major for the fifth time in your career, or playing your first tournament as a pro, there isn’t a golfer on the planet who doesn’t want to hit their drives further.

But is there a particular country which produces golfers that can hit the longest drives? 

Interested in this, PGATour.2k.com investigated PGA Tour Driving Data statistics in nine of the most popular golfing tournaments from the years 2010-2021, to uncover which country produces golfers who can drive the furthest. To accurately calculate distance, PGATour.2k.com used the Bayesian average, which considers both the average driving distance and the number of golfers, to create an overall evenly weighted score.

Countries whose golfers have the longest drives (on average):

Placing nineteenth are golfers from the United States with a weighted average driving distance of 292.50 yards. Out of the 328 American golfers featured in the final rankings, Bubba Watson proved to be the biggest hitter – averaging a driving distance of 362.1 yards at World Golf Championships in 2021.-

PGATour.2k.com can reveal that the country with the golfers with the longest average drive is Belgium! Using the weighted scoring, Belgian golfers drove the ball an average of 298.65 yards in all the tournaments analysed, with Nicolas Colsaerts being the top hitter. His best driving distance was at the 2012 U.S. Open – averaging 339.3 yards off the tee and a combined distance of 2,714 yards throughout the tournament.

Placing just behind in second is Northern Irish golfers, with a weighted average driving distance of 298.53 yards. Much of this is down to the driving ability of Rory McIlroy alone, who ranked fourth overall on the biggest hitter by country list. His best performance off the tee came at the World Golf Championships in 2015, where he hit a total distance of 2,757 yards – averaging 344.6 yards per drive.

Venezuelan golfers ranked third with a weighted average driving distance of 297.24 yards in the tournaments analysed. Jhonattan Vegas is the only Venezuelan who features on the list, but he remarkably had the highest average driving distance in three out of the nine tournaments from 2010 – 2021 (World Golf Championships, PGA Championship, and Arnold Palmer Invitational).

Coming in fourth are Chileans with a weighted average driving distance of 296.55 yards. Joaquin Niemann is the only Chilean to feature on the list, and similarly to Vegas, had the highest average driving distance in three out of the nine tournaments analysed (U.S. Open, Masters Tournament and The Players Championship).

Completing the top five are golfers from Spain, with a weighted average driving distance of 295.98 yards. Out of the 14 Spanish golfers featured in the final rankings, Alvaro Quiros proved to be the biggest hitter – averaging a driving distance of 334.5 yards at the World Golf Championships in 2015.

Golfers with the longest drives, on average:

Methodology

1. PGATour.2k.com sought to determine the country whose golfers have the longest drives. In golf, a drive is the first shot you take from the tee box, intended to move the ball a great distance down the fairway towards the green.
2. To do so, driving data statistics were collected from the official PGA Tour website from the years 2010-2021.
3. To focus the data, nine of the most popular tournaments on tour were selected for further analysis. The list of tournaments was sourced from several reports investigating the most popular golf tournaments. The nine tournaments analysed were the Arnold Palmer Invitational, PGA Championship, Masters Tournament, Tour Championship, The Players Championship, U.S. Open, World Golf Championships, The Open Championship, and The Memorial Tournament.
4. In total, 686 golfers from 40 different countries who featured on longest driving data list were analysed.
5. Following the collection of data, the golfers were grouped together by nationality in order to find out each country’s average overall.
6. Subsequently, a Bayesian average of each country was calculated, which considered the country’s driving distance average and the number of golfers per country.
7. Finally, countries were ranked in descending order by the Bayesian average, thus determining the countries whose golfers have the longest drives.
8. The data was collected on 31/01/2022 and is accurate as of then.