Every year, like clockwork, the golfing powers that be remind us that the average golfer is hitting the ball too far. It must be the ball. Or some such nonsense.
For the eighth consecutive year, Arcos is providing a different kind of testimony – actual shots on the course by real players playing real rounds. And for the eighth year in a row, the data tells the same story.
The average amateur isn’t hitting it farther than in 2018. Women are actually hitting it shorter.
About Arccos 2026 driving distance report
2026 edition (download the full report here) is based on more than five million rounds and nearly 10 million driver shots recorded during calendar year 2025. Total time (carries plus appearances) on par 4s and par 5s, broken down by age, handicap and gender. If you want a clear-eyed look at how amateurs really hit it off, this is as powerful a data set as you’ll find anywhere.
With that, here are the six insights I find most interesting.
The average amateur isn’t lasting any longer
In 2018, the average male Arcos user hit driver 224.0 yards. In 2025, this number is 224.1.
#BOMBS
If you’re scoring at home, that’s one-tenth of a “progress” over eight calendar years. Twisted faces, AI heads, faster balls, better shafts. None of them have moved the needle for the average weekend hacker. Not from a yard. Not by half. Certainly not at all.
Remind me again why we’re swinging the golf ball?
Women are actually losing distance
Here is the part that is often overlooked. Over the same eight-year period (see above), the women’s average dropped from 179.2 yards to 175.7. A loss of three and a half meters.
The report doesn’t reveal why, but given how much the gap drops with age (more on that in a second), it’s reasonable to wonder if the female user base has gradually shifted older. Whatever the explanation, it’s hard to look at the trend line and conclude that anything remotely resembling a crisis exists in amateur women’s golf.
The knife cuts both ways
Men 15 to 19 average 240 yards off the tee. Men in their 70s average 190.
Fifty meters. About a club and a half. It’s like the Bandon wind, except it never changes direction.
The reverse side is more interesting. During these same decades, over five, stroke increases from 38 percent for men in their 20s to 56 percent for men in their 70s. The old guys lose their distance. They also stop side-kicking him.
Whether that’s because they’ve finally figured something out or because they physically can’t swing enough to spray it, I’ll let you decide.
Either way, at least we have something to look forward to.
Ability, not age, is the biggest driver of distance
Sort the men’s records by handicap and the gap is brutal. A par of 4.9 averages 244 yards off the tee. A handicap over 30 averages 181.
Sixty three meters. In every age group. No stars.
For context, the entire age spectrum—from teenagers to men in their 70s—constitutes a 50-meter distance gap. The handicap spectrum, at any given age, is 63. Put another way: a 30 handicap in your 20s hits it shorter than a scratch in your 60s. Skill, not age, is the single biggest variable in how far an amateur hits a driver.
For women, the handicap spread is even wider: 75 yards between the lowest and highest handicap groups.
“Drive for show, putt for dough” remains one of golf’s great lies. Better players don’t just chip and putt better. They hit it materially farther off the tee.
And no, your good drive last Sunday doesn’t count.
Accuracy is not the draw (the wrong shot is)
The high-handicap “yeah, but I’m always in the game” defense doesn’t hold up either.
Men with scratches up to 4.9 hit the fairway 50 percent of the time. The group over 30 reaches 40 percent. A difference of 10 points, but not catastrophic.
The catastrophic figure is what happens to the losses.
According to Arcco, 12 percent of putts by players with a 4.9 scratch result in either a penalty or a forced recovery — punches, pushes, loose balls, no realistic shots on the green. For the over-30 crowd, that number is 45 percent.
Read it again. Almost half of every drive of a 30-handicap stroke ends with either a stroke on the card or a sidestep back into the fairway. The loose ball gets the headlines. The recovery shot is what quietly increases the score. At 33 per cent of all driving over 30, it is almost three times the conviction rate.
The data is what the data is, but still, I feel harassed on a deeply personal level right now.
Women’s accuracy does not track handicap
I saved this curiosity for last.
For men, fairway accuracy improves with handicap. Modestly, but improving.
For women, basically none. The most accurate handicap group (scratch up to 4.9) achieves 55 percent of fairways. The least accurate (25-to-29.9) comes in at 51 percent. Four points across the ability spectrum, and Arccos himself notes that there is no meaningful correlation between women’s handicap and women’s driving accuracy.
Where the best men’s players are taller and straighter, the best women’s players are mostly taller. Dexterity off the tee, for whatever reason, appears almost entirely in yards.
If you have a theory, I’m all ears.
Takeaway
Eight years in, Arcos the data continue to make a hard case to argue that the recreational distance “crisis” is essentially a fiction. Men have not gained any yards. Women have lost some. Ability moves the needle more than age. And what separates the best amateurs from everyone else isn’t the freeways they hit—it’s the trouble they manage to avoid.
You can dig into the full 2026 Arccos driving distance report (including year-over-year breakdowns by age and hurdles going back to 2018) here.
