Distance off the tee
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The women’s game is witnessing an explosion in driving distance – but will the ability to bomb it off the tee be the deciding factor at this year’s AIG Women’s Open? Tight fairways and thick rough mean Muirfield demands accuracy just as much as raw power
The power
and the glory
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n 1997, John Daly became the first man to maintain an average driving distance of more than 300 yards for an entire season. At the time, the prospect of a female golfer doing the same seemed absurd. The average driving distance on the LPGA Tour that year was just 237 yards, and only two players – Simi Mehra and Jane Geddes – managed an average of more than 260 yards. Fast forward 25 years and we have a different story. Anne van Dam averaged 290.8 yards on the LPGA Tour last season and 297.7 yards on the Ladies European Tour (LET). Two players – Pia Babnik and Emma Cabrera-Bello – are currently maintaining averages above 300 yards for the 2022 season. The average driving distance for all players on the LPGA Tour exceeded 250 yards in 2016 and has been steadily increasing ever since, while the LET average broke the 250-yard barrier for the first time last season. With yardages in the women’s game increasing year after year, it is now a question of when, not if, a female golfer will
break that 300-yard season average barrier – and the answer is likely to be sooner rather than later. The 26-year-old van Dam is an obvious candidate to be the first to achieve the feat, but she faces competition from Babnik and Cabrera-Bello, as well as Pauline Roussin-Bouchard, who was only a yard behind van Dam’s LET average last year, and Bianca Pagdanganan, who topped the LPGA Tour for driving distance the previous year, edging out van Dam by one yard. Whoever it is, when one player does it, expect the floodgates to open. Nowadays, around a third of PGA Tour players boast an average driving distance above 300 yards. Daly’s landmark feat quickly became commonplace, much like Roger Bannister’s formerly “impossible” four-minute mile. But what do the ever-increasing distances in the women’s game mean for this year’s AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield? Should we write off the chances of any player who does not bomb it miles off the tee? Not necessarily. Four of the women’s Majors last year were won by big-hitting players who ranked
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Words: Rob McGarr
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