It's Early But PGA Tour Driving Distances On Amazing Pace

As the stat gurus at FiveThirtyEight expose a juiced baseball, they also are examining distance in golf and some eye-opening 2018 numbers.

Josh Planos does note we've only seen 44 drives from leader Tony Finau, but the distance leader is at a 90.9% rate of eclipsing 300 yards.

But while he’s playing better everywhere on the course, Finau is putting on a show in the tee box. With 327 yards per drive, the 28-year-old is smashing the tour average by 32 yards.

It goes without saying that a lot has changed in terms of technology and training since Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer were marquee figures — or even since John Daly was pounding beers during rounds and wowing fans with his long drives. In 1980, the first year for which data is available, Dan Pohl led the tour with an average driving distance of 274.3 yards. In 1997, Daly became the first man on the PGA Tour to average at least 300 yards per drive; this season, 65 players are on pace to do so.

The graph accompanying the story also suggests why we may be hearing from the governing bodies soon related to the distance topic.