Four players in the PGA Tour’s 50-and-over league (aka the PGA Tour Champions) are averaging 300 yards or longer off the tee this season: Stewart Cink, Padraig Harrington, Brendan Jones and Cameron Percy.
That might not sound like a lot of players given the average driving distance for all of the PGA Tour is 303.7 yards, but relatively-speaking, it is. Consider that before 2023, the Champions tour never had had more than one player crack 300 yards for the season — and, in most seasons, none. The overall Champions tour driving distance, no surprise, is also on the rise. This year, the graybeards are averaging 283.3 per poke. That’s a four-yard increase from 2024, nearly a six-yard jump from ’23 and more than a 14-yard spike from 2013. Here’s the full data set over that period:
2025* — 283.3
2024 — 279.1
2023 — 277.6
2022 — 280.3
2021 — No data (Covid)
2020 — 275
2019 — 272.2
2018 — 277.6
2017 — 275.7
2016 — 274.7
2015 — 273.3
2014 — 270.9
2013 — 269
*Through Sept. 7
Most of the reasons for the boom are obvious and in line with why driving distance has ticked upward on other tours (and why the governing bodies are taking action to curb the gains): speed-centric techniques; specialized training (on the range and in the gym); and optimized technology. But there’s also another dynamic at work: Tiger Woods’s peers are coming of age. (By which, in this context, we mean “turning 50.”) That’s significant because Woods’s generation was the first to aggressively pursue distance with the help of data, science and technology. What other choice did they have when the guy running circles around them also happened to be 20 or 30 yards longer than them?
Among that pack of Tiger chasers was Stewart Cink, who since turning 50 in 2023 has won three times on the Champions circuit and this season ranks second on the money list behind Miguel Angel Jiménez. “As players behind me turn 50,” Cink told reporters the other day at the Champions event in St. Louis, “these are going to be players that have had power as one of their top priorities in their game for their whole career, and now they’re just going to bring it out here. So there’s going to be more and more guys that are hitting it 170-plus ball speed off the tee and just absolutely sending it. That’s what’s going to happen and it’s coming.”
Coming, Stew? It’s already here!
On the PGA Tour in 2020, Cink averaged “only” 295 yards off tee. Then he tweaked his attack angle, added more loft to his driver and started paying attention to biomechanics. Voila: 304-305 yards became his norm, along with the 175 mph or more of ball speed from which he still benefits today. This is pro golf in 2025, but the seeds for this approach were planted years ago. “It was more I think the technology that we learned how to take advantage of, like the launch monitors and all the data and optimization,” Cink said of his prime. “We all learned strokes gained off the tee; we learned how important it is to push your ball a little further down the fairway. Basically every 10 yards is a tenth of a stroke. That’s kind of like giving it away for free there, if you can hit it 10 yards further.”
Padraig Harrington thinks the same way. His obsession with getting faster has led him to speed train at tournaments with a back-up driver in case his high-velocity swings result in a cracked face. Harrington says he has clocked ball speeds in the high 180s, and in 2024 his average driving distance on the Champions tour was a beefy 308 yards.
Oh, and that guy Cink and Harrington were looking up at all those years on the PGA Tour? You might also see him bombing drives on the Champions tour come next year. Tiger Woods has not yet revealed his intentions for competitive senior golf, but he’ll become eligible when he turns 50 on Dec. 30, and being able to use a cart in tournament play surely would appeal to him. Ernie Els has urged Woods to peg it. So has Jack Nicklaus, who went so far as to predict that Woods would win half the Champions events in which he plays. And, yes, Woods, despite his physical limitations, can still get it out there. During the 2025 TGL season, his ball speed average was 174.7 mph with a max speed of 181.2.
Other bombers also are creeping up on 50. Charley Hoffman, who can still move his ball, hits the half-century mark at the end of 2026. Four-time Tour winner Ryan Palmer is also getting close; he turns 50 in 2027. After a rocky 2025 season on LIV, long-hitting Henrik Stenson, who is 49, is facing relegation; should he lose his LIV spot, who knows where he might end up — maybe, at some point, launching missiles on the Champions tour.
