There are long drivers and there are short drivers of the ball. We had a recent forum discussion about this topic. Fellow staff member Jeff Gladchun was helpful in doing a bit of research and we both thought it might be interesting to share the results.
So who is the longest player pound for pound? What other interesting information did I see when doing this research? Read on to find out…
Little Big Hitters
At just about any juncture in golf history, there has always been a handful of big hitters. I mean big in both ways&hellip big in distance off the tee and big in physical stature. Jack Nicklaus was a big guy from Ohio. John Daly is short, but a stocky and large in multiple ways. Davis Love III is tall and long… heck, we have a guy named Bubba knocking it out there a country mile. All of these players had and have a size and strength advantage over smaller players.
So what about the little guy? I love seeing a well-struck golf ball, but even more so from someone you don’t expect. Some of these players have refined their swings to maximize their swing speed and get the most from every part of their body. This is why there is a buzz surrounding guys like Camilo Villegas. So where does the Columbian and others like him rank pound for pound? Here are the top 30 in driving distance this year in order of yards per pound:
Player Name Height DD Weight Yard / lb Camilo Villegas 69 306.3 160 1.9144 Charles Warren 68 298.1 160 1.8631 Henrik Bjornstad 68 300.4 163 1.8429 Jonathan Kaye 71 300.9 165 1.8236 Carlos Franco 69 300.1 165 1.8188 Adam Scott 72 308.3 170 1.8135 Rich Beem 68 297.8 165 1.8048 Bubba Watson 75 320.9 180 1.7828 Trevor Immelman 69 301.3 170 1.7724 Robert Garrigus 71 305.0 175 1.7429 Jimmy Walker 74 301.7 180 1.6761 Bubba Dickerson 72 297.6 178 1.6719 Roger Tambellini 75 299.3 180 1.6628 Tag Ridings 73 307.6 185 1.6627 David Duval 72 298.7 180 1.6594 Brandt Jobe 71 297.7 180 1.6539 JB Holmes 71 313.3 190 1.6489 Tiger Woods 73 304.8 185 1.6476 Fred Couples 71 301.7 185 1.6308 James Driscoll 72 299.0 185 1.6162 Phil Mickleson 74 299.8 190 1.5779 Harrison Frazar 72 298.4 190 1.5705 Jeff Overton 76 297.9 195 1.5277 Charley Hoffman 72 298.7 200 1.4935 Hank Kuehne 74 303.6 205 1.4810 Brett Wetterich 72 302.3 205 1.4746 Steven Bowditch 72 302.8 210 1.4419 John Daly 71 304.9 220 1.3859 Chris Couch 76 299.8 225 1.3324 Jason Gore 73 297.9 235 1.2677
As you can see, Villegas is tops when it comes to getting the most from the least. The svelte kid averaged 1.9144 yards for every pound in his body. Compare that to Bubba Watson, the leader in DD on tour, who averages 1.7828 yards per pound. If Bubba could get the same efficiency from his body as Villegas, he’d be averaging over 344 yards per drive. Even more staggering is if Jason Gore, the heaviest of the top 30 drivers on tour, could do the same he would average almost 450 yards.
Charles Howell, who is not on the list, is one of the other smaller players that have a high yards per pound average at 1.8632… good enough for second and he’s only 83rd in DD. Rory Sabatini is another smallish guy that can hit it pretty hard as well. If I had more time, I’d pull all the data for all the players, but we’ll look to do that another time…
Just for Fun
I thought it would be fun to see what the bottom 10 in DD looked like as well when it came to yards per pound.
Player Name Height Weight DD Yard / lb Skip Kendall 68 150 270.8 1.8053 Corey Pavin 69 155 262.5 1.6935 Fred Funk 68 165 267.0 1.6182 Matt Gogel 70 175 270.0 1.5429 Mark O'Meara 72 180 269.7 1.4983 Robert Gamez 74 185 272.6 1.4735 Jim Furyk 74 185 270.8 1.4638 Brad Faxon 73 180 260.1 1.4450 Bart Bryant 72 195 272.8 1.3990
I was a bit surprised to see Skip Kendall with such a high yard per pound average. He’d be in the top 10 in the other list. Heck, even Corey Pavin beats out most of the longer players. I thought that there might be a few light players on this list, but that the distance difference would more than make up for that lack of weight. Bart Bryant was the only guy in the bottom ten in DD that weighed over 185 pounds.
Again, if someone has the bio data for all the players on tour, please send it along because I’d be curious to see if there is someone else on tour that would beat out Villegas.
Light Facts
So I thought that the column would end there, but there are a couple things that interested me. First was the height on a few of the golfers. I never knew that Rich Beem was only 5′ 8″ tall. Did anyone ever think that he was shorter than Fred Funk? The other player I thought was taller is Adam Scott. I have seen him from afar a couple times at the Open last year and thought he was at least 6′ 2″. It’s probably because he has such a long, fluid swing.
The other fact that really bugged me was Phil’s weight. 190? Hold on and back up the truck. I’m not going to criticize Phil for his conditioning, or lack there of. I’ve struggled with weight all my life… but come on. He might have been at 190 when he came on tour, but we’ve got to add about 20% to that number. If he and Hank Kuehne are the same height, there is no way that Hank is 15 pounds heavier. No way.
So with that I guess you can take the above pound-for-pound analysis with a grain of salt because it is only as good as the data. Still, if there were any issues with the data, I could have clean them up or throw them out. Phil was so far down the list I didn’t bother changing his data… also it made for an interesting talking point and that’s what I’m here for.
Great job, Dave. Very interesting read. I’m glad to see my prediction that Camilo made the most out of the least held true. Another interesting (although impossible) article topic would be to compare the Lean Body Mass Percentage of a player to his yardage. Except there is no way to collect that sort of data.
Thanks for a great article and a good read!
If Phil weighs 190, then I weigh about 175. Needless to say, I’m about 200. So take that for what it’s worth. And Phil has at least five or six inches on me in height.
Ok, enough about Phil. Great article Dave! I always enjoy numbers, and this article was no exception.
I was happy to see CH3 up there near 1.9 yards per pound. I didn’t know he was way back in the 80s as far as DD goes though.
Fun read man.
Very interesting. One would also think that the height data is more accurate than weight. And also that height could be a more significant variable because of the longer arc.
It is interesting that after measuring that:
Villegas is still no.1 at 4,4391 yars per inch, all the way down to Overton at 3,9197 per inch.
Among the biggest changes are:
Holmes, 17th in rating per pound but 3rd at rating per inch.
Then: Daly becomes 9th instead of 28th
Couples 12th against 19th
Kaye goes down to 13th from 4th
Duval goes to 20th from 15th
Dickerson 23rd from 12th
Walker 26th from 11th
Tambellini 28th from 13th.
All others remain within 3-4 ranks between the 2 measures. This means that there is generally a good correlation betwenn height and weight – which is normal-. Mickleson is 27th against 21st. Conclusions: are all those who loose ranking weight shy ??