{"id":1230,"date":"2006-03-09T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesandtrap.com\/uncategorized\/pound_for_pound_and_other_light_facts\/"},"modified":"2006-03-09T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T15:00:00","slug":"pound_for_pound_and_other_light_facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesandtrap.com\/b\/the_numbers_game\/pound_for_pound_and_other_light_facts","title":{"rendered":"Pound for Pound and Other Light Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/b\/imgs\/numbers_game\/tng_title.gif\" height=\"79\" width=\"125\" alt=\"The Numbers Game\" \/>There are long drivers and there are short drivers of the ball. We had a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/thesandtrap.com\/forum\/showthread.php?t=1710&#38;page=3#20\">forum discussion<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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&hellip;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Little Big Hitters<\/strong><br \/>\nAt just about any juncture in golf history, there has always been a handful of big hitters. I mean big in both ways&#38;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&hellip; 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.<\/p>\n<p>So what about the little guy? I love seeing a well-struck golf ball, but even more so from someone you don&#8217;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:<\/p>\n<pre>Player Name       Height    DD      Weight  Yard \/ lb\nCamilo Villegas     69     306.3     160     1.9144\nCharles Warren      68     298.1     160     1.8631\nHenrik Bjornstad    68     300.4     163     1.8429\nJonathan Kaye       71     300.9     165     1.8236\nCarlos Franco       69     300.1     165     1.8188\nAdam Scott          72     308.3     170     1.8135\nRich Beem           68     297.8     165     1.8048\nBubba Watson        75     320.9     180     1.7828\nTrevor Immelman     69     301.3     170     1.7724\nRobert Garrigus     71     305.0     175     1.7429\nJimmy Walker        74     301.7     180     1.6761\nBubba Dickerson     72     297.6     178     1.6719\nRoger Tambellini    75     299.3     180     1.6628\nTag Ridings         73     307.6     185     1.6627\nDavid Duval         72     298.7     180     1.6594\nBrandt Jobe         71     297.7     180     1.6539\nJB Holmes           71     313.3     190     1.6489\nTiger Woods         73     304.8     185     1.6476\nFred Couples        71     301.7     185     1.6308\nJames Driscoll      72     299.0     185     1.6162\nPhil Mickleson      74     299.8     190     1.5779\nHarrison Frazar     72     298.4     190     1.5705\nJeff Overton        76     297.9     195     1.5277\nCharley Hoffman     72     298.7     200     1.4935\nHank Kuehne         74     303.6     205     1.4810\nBrett Wetterich     72     302.3     205     1.4746\nSteven Bowditch     72     302.8     210     1.4419\nJohn Daly           71     304.9     220     1.3859\nChris Couch         76     299.8     225     1.3324\nJason Gore          73     297.9     235     1.2677<\/pre>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&hellip; good enough for second and he&#8217;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&#8217;d pull all the data for all the players, but we&#8217;ll look to do that another time&hellip;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Just for Fun<\/strong><br \/>\nI thought it would be fun to see what the bottom 10 in DD looked like as well when it came to yards per pound.<\/p>\n<pre>Player Name    Height    Weight     DD      Yard \/ lb\nSkip Kendall     68       150      270.8     1.8053\nCorey Pavin      69       155      262.5     1.6935\nFred Funk        68       165      267.0     1.6182\nMatt Gogel       70       175      270.0     1.5429\nMark O'Meara     72       180      269.7     1.4983\nRobert Gamez     74       185      272.6     1.4735\nJim Furyk        74       185      270.8     1.4638\nBrad Faxon       73       180      260.1     1.4450\nBart Bryant      72       195      272.8     1.3990<\/pre>\n<p>I was a bit surprised to see Skip Kendall with such a high yard per pound average. He&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Again, if someone has the bio data for all the players on tour, please send it along because I&#8217;d be curious to see if there is someone else on tour that would beat out Villegas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Light Facts<\/strong><br \/>\nSo 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&#8242; 8&#8243; 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&#8242; 2&#8243;. It&#8217;s probably because he has such a long, fluid swing.<\/p>\n<p>The other fact that really bugged me was Phil&#8217;s weight. 190? Hold on and back up the truck. I&#8217;m not going to criticize Phil for his conditioning, or lack there of. I&#8217;ve struggled with weight all my life&hellip; but come on. He might have been at 190 when he came on tour, but we&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t bother changing his data&hellip; also it made for an interesting talking point and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m here for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You expect big guys to hit it a long way, but sometimes there are some little guys that show a bit of pop. This week we find out who is the longest hitter pound-for-pound on the PGA Tour this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the_numbers_game"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Pound for Pound and Other Light Facts (The Numbers Game) - The Sand Trap .com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thesandtrap.com\/b\/the_numbers_game\/pound_for_pound_and_other_light_facts\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Pound for Pound and Other Light Facts (The Numbers Game) - The Sand Trap .com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"You expect big guys to hit it a long way, but sometimes there are some little guys that show a bit of pop. 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