THIS COUNTRY produces the biggest hitters on the PGA Tour, and it's NOT USA...
Based on extensive research, it was discovered that a prominent European country has produced the biggest hitters on the PGA Tour since 2010.
The modern era of golf is revolved around skill and precision, but there is also an obsession with distance and how far you can hit the ball.
PGATour.2k.com wanted to discover which country has produced the biggest hitters on the PGA Tour using data since 2010 from the circuit's biggest events.
The study used driving distances from the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the PGA Championship, The Masters, the Tour Championship, The Players Championship, the US Open, World Golf Championships, The Open Championship and the Memorial Tournament.
In order to accurately calculate distance, PGATour.2k.com used the Bayesian average which takes the average driving distance and the number of golfers to create an evenly weighted score from each country.
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It was found that since 2010, Belgium led the way with the longest average drive. With weighted scoring, Belgian golfers drove the ball 298.65 yards in all of the tournaments analysed. Nicolas Colsaerts was the top hitter.
At the 2012 US Open, Colsaerts averaged 339.3 yards off the tee and he achieved a combined distance of 2,714 yards throughout the tournament.
Behind Belgium in second place was Northern Ireland with 298.53 yards and this is largely down to the power of Rory McIlroy. At the World Golf Championships in 2015, the four-time major champion averaged 344.6 yards per drive and tallied 2,757 for the week.
Although the United States of America provided 3651 contributions to the study and 328 players as part of the research, PGATour2k.com found that they averaged 292.5 yards off the tee in the data range. They are in 26th place between New Zealand and Paraguay.
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Venezuela are in third position with Jhonattan Vegas being the only contributing player from this nation. He averaged 297.24 yards, while Chile was in fourth with Joaquin Niemann being their only contributor as well.
Spain rounded off the top five nations with the longest driving distance. Alvaro Quiros was their biggest hitter and 14 Spanish golfers contributed to the study.
In total, 686 golfers were considered from 40 different countries. Data was collected from the PGA Tour website from 2010 to 2021.
