Tiger Woods was one of the longest hit golfers – waiting for the sport to be picked up

Tiger Woods has returned to its usual place among the big winners of golf, it is tempting to let nostalgia for sport infiltrate. Tiger's back! It's like in the 1990s! But as in all sports, the game Woods played 20 years ago is very different from the current version and even makes his Masters win last month even more impressive.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the power of modern hitters. In 1995, the last season of Woods before becoming professional, the average PGA Tour golfer hit the ball by 263.6 yards per workout; Leader John Daly recorded 289.0 yards per practice. So far this season, the average is 292.9 yards per workout, and the champion of the round, Cameron Champ, records at 315.7. That's right – the average The distance traveled from 2019 would have driven the PGA circuit each season up to 1996. Woods' mark, in 1997, was 294.8, ranking only second after Daly's 302.0 . An average of 294.8 yards today would only be the 86th of the 214 golfers on tour, tied with former world No. 1 Jordan Spieth.

What was once a huge advantage in distance Woods used to get a score of -13 compared to the normal par 5 by the 1997 Masters is now nothing special. These days, just about everyone hits like Tiger – if not better.

So, what has happened? First of all, professional golfers took the initiative of Woods and became much stronger and more athletic. Even though Daly was a nature freak – he never worked and bombed records while smoking chains and pounding Diet Cokes – the best players of today have much more in Common with the current world number 1, Dustin Johnson, who has a slim figure of six feet. 4, hits the ball at 305 yards per player and proudly publishes Instagram photos without a shirt. As we have already written, the pursuit of Woods by major leagues has been made more difficult by the influx of young athletes to the game he himself inspired. And much of the younger generation's success is linked to hitting the ball far away.

But another even more important factor is the drastic improvement of equipment over the years. Prior to the 1990s, the pilot club heads were significantly smaller, made of heavy materials like khaki (instead of metal) and attached to the ends of shorter and heavier metal rods (as opposed to graphite). As more and more players began to move to modern clubs – the last big winner with a persimmon rider was Bernhard Langer's victory at the 1993 Masters – the circuit began to see a considerable increase in driving distance (and, interesting thing, a decrease in driving accuracy). More than just introducing more fit players, experienced golfers hit harder: the 60 qualifiers for the PGA Tour ranking in 1995 and 2005 recorded an average increase of 18.6 yards per practice over that period.

In layman's terms, lighter clubs with a longer neck and larger head area generate more power. As a fun exercise last year, YouTuber's professional PGA player, Rick Shiels, hit 10 times with an upscale club about 20 years ago (the Ping TiSi Tec) and 2018 (the Ping G400 Max) and measured the results using the follow-up analysis. On average, Shiels estimates he hit the ball 16 yards farther into the air (and 19 yards more total) with the modern rider, thanks in part to a faster 4 mph ball speed over the clubhead:

Of course, the ball itself has also facilitated driving over great distances. The introduction of the Titleist Pro V1 model in 2000, featuring a "multilayer" design with a solid rubber core and a thin polymer housing, instantly revolutionized the way beads were made, optimizing power without sacrificing accuracy. When Shiels performed a similar test between 1998 and 2018 (with the same club for each ball), he pushed the ball 11 meters farther into the air – and 12 meters away in total – with the current Pro V1, thanks again at close to 3 mph boost in speed on the face.

These obvious technological improvements have led to questions about the need to recompose these benefits at the professional level to make the game more difficult. Although the debate on the golf ball is raging, many leading courses have been redone since the 90s, "protecting themselves from tigers" by adding more distance to their patterns. In the 1990s, the Par-72's major championship courses had a total length of 7,006.1 yards on average; in the 2000s, this average rose to 7,319.3 yds and this year to 7,456.6 yds – an increase of 6.4% reflecting the evolution of the average distance traveled since the early 2000s.

And just as existing players have increased their power through technology, the main existing hosts have added time to compensate for it. Sixteen courses hosted a major in the 1990s and 2010s; These courses averaged 7,011.6 yards at the time and 7,307.9 yards now, an average increase of 296.3 yards. Even the Black Course at Bethpage State Park in Long Island, home to this weekend's PGA Championship, has gone up 222km since Woods won the US Open in 2002.

It should be noted that the explosion in driving distances and the craze for tiger protection has largely stabilized since the mid-2000s. The average PGA circuit training continues to increase by a few meters every two or three years, but current leaders such as Champ, Johnson and Rory McIlroy are tackling the same distance as Bubba Watson and Robert Garrigus ten years later. earlier. In this sense, the match that Woods had left at the start of his great eleven year drought in 2008 was actually similar to the one he had climbed last month.

Similarly, when Tiger leaves Thursday in Bethpage in the PGA Championship, the power of modern sport will be fully highlighted. Woods could still break the 300m record, as he did in the late '90s, but he will not be looking for the lead in the distance circuit; instead, this part of his game makes him another golfer in the middle of the pack.