By Jaacob Bowden

Have you ever been curious to know how fast your favorite Tour player’s swing speed is?

It’s not listed which tournament the stats came from, but it is believed these Flightscope stats came from an European Tour event in 2008. Stats included are last name, first name, club speed, ball speed, back spin, side spin, launch angle, height, flight time, carry distance (yards), and smash factor.

You can download the Flightscope documents below:

European PGA Tour – Driving Stats (pdf)
European PGA Tour – Driving Stats (excel)
European PGA Tour – Driving Stats Sample 2 (pdf)

Trackman has also kept the average stats of all the PGA Tour players from 2004-2008.  Stats included are club, club speed, attack angle, ball speed, smash factor, vertical launch, spin rate, max height, land angle, and carry (yards and meters).  Keep in mind that the club lofts are not listed.  For example, one guys PW might be 48 degrees…and another’s might be 45 degrees.

Check out the numbers in the below Trackman document:

  PGA Tour Driver And Iron Stats – 2004-2008 (pdf)

Some of the things that I found interesting and noteworthy are:

• I’ve heard of the average swing speed for a Tour player being around 113-114…but      Flightscope and Trackman actually show that to be 110-112.

• Despite getting more driver distance by catching the ball on the upswing, the average player actually hits down on the ball with driver.

• Many professionals are not hitting drivers that would optimize them for distance. For example, based on my experience, the average launch angle is a little too low and the average spin rate is too high. This may be due to ignorance and mis-information, but it may also be done on purpose because accuracy becomes more important for many once they have reached a certain level of distance. The higher the spin with the driver, the more accuracy one would have off the tee.

• The long hitting, Alvaro Quiros of Spain, had the highest swing speed of the European Tour players at 125 mph. He may be doing it on purpose as I mentioned above, but if he brought his spin rate down and launch angle slightly higher…he could be hitting the ball even further.

• I’ve heard that 1.48 or 1.50 is “perfect” as far as smash factor goes with the driver. Since both data sets show an average of 1.48…Tour players would appear to be getting about as much ball speed as they can out of their current swing speeds. Basically, they are hitting the sweet spot a lot.

• Smash factor goes down when you get to higher lofted clubs.

If you liked the article about the swing speed of PGA and European PGA tour players with irons and you think it would help another golfer, please

 

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