Welcome to Play Smart, a column to help you play smarter, better golf from Game Improvement Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen (who you can follow on Twitter right here).
Every year at the Open Championship, you’ll occasionally hear the same piece of perceived wisdom. That to win the Open, players need to hit the ball low. That those who keep the ball close to the ground, and running along it, will fair best.
It sounds good, and sort of makes sense. But is it actually true?
To see if the low-ball-hitters-thrive-across-the-pond idea was indeed true, I took quick dive into three key advanced ball striking metrics that the PGA Tour measures:
- Apex height, which measures the highest point players’ shots reach on measured drives.
- Launch angle, which is the number of degrees the ball launches into the air immediately off the clubface.
- Spin rate, which the how much the ball spins backwards after impact.
Since 2007, the year the PGA Tour started keeping these metrics, there have been 14 Open Championships contested. Advanced PGA Tour statistics are available for 11 of those winners — Louis Oosthuizen, Darren Clarke, and Henrik Stenson are the three who didn’t register enough PGA Tour rounds in the year they won in order to be eligible for these metrics.
Starting with the apex of players’ measured drives, recent Open Champions tend to hit the ball almost 10 percent higher than Tour average. The lowest among them was last year’s champion Collin Morikawa, but even he hits the ball less than two feet below the tour’s average apex.
Phil Mickelson is one of next lowest players, but his statistics that year played are something of an anomaly: He played the 2013 season (including that year’s Open) with a strong 3-wood instead of a driver. Though he was slightly below average that season as a result, he’s generally a high-ball hitter, ranking fifth, eighth, 17th, eighth, first, ninth and first in apex height on Tour since 2015.
Taking all that into account along with the numbers, recent history suggests Open champions tend to hit the ball higher than average.
| Year | Winner | Avg apex (feet) | Winner apex | Difference |
| 2021 | Collin Morikawa | 100.8 | 99 | -1.8 |
| 2019 | Shane Lowry* | 100.1 | 98.5 | -1.6 |
| 2018 | Francesco Molinari | 105.2 | 119.9 | 14.7 |
| 2017 | Jordan Spieth | 104 | 107.6 | 3.6 |
| 2015 | Zach Johnson | 99.4 | 104 | 4.6 |
| 2014 | Rory McIlroy | 98.1 | 111.2 | 13.1 |
| 2013 | Phil Mickelson | 96.1 | 94.5 | -1.6 |
| 2012 | Ernie Els | 96.4 | 106.1 | 9.7 |
| 2009 | Stewart Cink | 92.11 | 98.1 | 5.99 |
| 2008 | Padraig Harrington | 90.6 | 113.11 | 22.51 |
| 2007 | Padraig Harrington | 88.8 | 106.6 | 17.8 |
| 97.42 | 105.33 | 7.91 |
But there are different ways of hitting the ball high, depending on how you swing the club. Some golfers tend to hit the ball more on the upswing, which sends the ball higher into the air initially with lower spin. Other golfers do the opposite: They hit more down on the ball, which generally starts the ball lower and generates more backspin.
What do recent Open champions do? They tend towards the former. The launch angle on their stock, measured drives on tour are squarely in the “above average zone.” More than half a degree higher than their peers, but almost two degrees below the highest launches on Tour.
| Year | Winner | Avg Launch (degrees) | Winner Launch | Difference |
| 2021 | Collin Morikawa | 10.52 | 10.27 | -0.25 |
| 2019 | Shane Lowry* | 10.49 | 9.7 | -0.79 |
| 2018 | Francesco Molinari | 11.06 | 12.72 | 1.66 |
| 2017 | Jordan Spieth | 11.1 | 11.88 | 0.78 |
| 2015 | Zach Johnson | 10.77 | 13.07 | 2.3 |
| 2014 | Rory McIlroy | 11.01 | 11.53 | 0.52 |
| 2013 | Phil Mickelson | 10.87 | 10.54 | -0.33 |
| 2012 | Ernie Els | 10.93 | 12.67 | 1.74 |
| 2009 | Stewart Cink | 11.27 | 11.13 | -0.14 |
| 2008 | Padraig Harrington | 11.26 | 12.48 | 1.22 |
| 2007 | Padraig Harrington | 10.83 | 11.74 | 0.91 |
| 10.92 | 11.61 | 0.69 |
And along those lines, they’re putting ever-so-slightly less backspin than the Tour’s average.
| Year | Winner | Avg spin (RPMs) | Winner spin | Difference |
| 2021 | Collin Morikawa | 2,526.90 | 2,286.30 | -240.60 |
| 2019 | Shane Lowry* | 2,542.10 | 2,317.00 | -225.10 |
| 2018 | Francesco Molinari | 2,641.30 | 2,725.00 | 83.70 |
| 2017 | Jordan Spieth | 2,578.60 | 2,449.20 | -129.40 |
| 2015 | Zach Johnson | 2,599.00 | 2,363.40 | -235.60 |
| 2014 | Rory McIlroy | 2,618.90 | 2,383.40 | -235.50 |
| 2013 | Phil Mickelson | 2,639.40 | 2,618.10 | -21.30 |
| 2012 | Ernie Els | 2,685.90 | 2,458.10 | -227.80 |
| 2009 | Stewart Cink | 2,670.10 | 2,472.30 | -197.80 |
| 2008 | Padraig Harrington | 2,670.10 | 2,803.70 | 133.60 |
| 2007 | Padraig Harrington | 2,814.20 | 2,783.00 | -31.20 |
| 2635.14 | 2514.50 | -120.64 |
Take this all with a grain of salt, because there’s still room for plenty of work to be done on this, but my first look at some of these metrics shows the players best suited for the Open aren’t severely on either end of the spectrum. Instead, they can control their backspin enough to take advantage of a higher-than-average ball flight.
When we see which players in the 2022 field fit that profile — golfers who hit the ball no lower than two feet below the average apex, with a higher launch angle and corresponding lower spin rate — there are 21 players who pop out the other end. They’re all listed below, with those in the current top 20 of the world ranking bolded.
Aaron Wise, Cameron Smith, Chris Kirk, Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, Emiliano Grillo, Erik van Rooyen, Hideki Matsuyama, J.T. Poston, Jason Kokrak, Justin Rose, Keegan Bradley, Kevin Kisner, Mackenzie Hughes, Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Sepp Straka, Stewart Cink, Tyrrell Hatton, Viktor Hovland, Webb Simpson
There are certainly some names in that group that pass the smell test. Will the current trend hold true again this year?