Arccos data shows amateur driving distance hasn’t changed

For the eighth consecutive year, Arccos Golf has published its Annual Driving Distance Report, and for the eighth consecutive year, the story at the recreational level is essentially the same. Everyday golfers aren’t hitting it farther. The average male amateur drove it 224.0 yards in 2018. In 2025, that number was 224.1. Less than a foot of change across eight years of data drawn from nearly 10 million driver tee shots played in real rounds on real courses around the world.

Breaking down the numbers by skill level and age yields unsurprising results.

·      Men with a handicap between scratch and 4.9 average 244 yards. The highest handicappers, those at 30 and above, average 181, a 63-yard gap.

·      Male golfers in their teens average 240 yards. Men in their 70s average 190, a 50-yard drop. Every skill level loses distance at roughly the same rate.

·      While scratch golfers hit fairways only 10 percent more often than 30-plus handicappers, nearly half of all tee shots by 30-plus handicappers result in a penalty stroke or a recovery situation. For scratch players, that number is 12 percent.

The average female Arccos member drove it 179.2 yards in 2018, and by 2025 that number had fallen to 175.7. The gap between the best and worst female players is even wider than it is for men, with scratch-to-4.9 handicap women averaging 220 yards compared to 145 for those at 30 and above.

The Arccos 2026 Distance report confirms younger golfers hit the ball farther than older players, and skilled players are longer and straighter than less-skilled players

The USGA and R&A have seen similar numbers in their own research. Between 2021 and 2023, USGA researchers used TrackMan launch monitors to measure the actual driving distances of 627 recreational golfers across a range of ages and skill levels. The average male recreational golfer in that study drove it 226 yards. The average female drove it 144 yards. Those numbers align almost exactly with what Arccos found tracking millions of real rounds. Two completely different methodologies. The same answer.

So, even with advancements in driver technologies, fitting, coaching and fitness, the golfers who are the backbone of the game are not hitting the ball farther.

However, that goes against the trend at the elite men’s level that pushed the USGA and R&A to conclude that distance is a problem and opt to propose a change in the way golf balls are tested that will result in a rollback starting in 2030.

According to the most-recent USGA Distance Insights Report, PGA Tour players averaged 302.8 yards in 2025, gaining roughly a yard per year over the past decade. The Korn Ferry Tour, essentially the next generation of professionals, averaged 308.4 yards.

Aldrich Potgieter leads the PGA Tour in driving distance at 326.7 yards per tee shot.

And yet, in 2030, everyone is slated to start using a reduced-distance ball.

The USGA’s position is that slower-swinging players will barely feel the difference, but a reduced-distance ball can help to return the challenge to the game at the elite level and stop the need for designers to make longer courses that require more water, more chemicals and that take longer to play.

The data has been consistent and clear for years. The USGA and R&A concluded it. Now Arccos is independently concluding it, too. The distance problem, to whatever extent it exists, was never about the person playing a Saturday morning round. It’s about Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy and a handful of other elite players doing things with a golf ball that architects and the game’s governing bodies never anticipated.

Maybe those players need a distance correction, but the 18-handicapper who averaged 204 yards off the tee last season, his wife and his friends certainly do not.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Arccos report shows amateur driving distance flat since 2018