Driving Range Insights from the 2025 Open Championship

The driving range might be the most insightful location on property at a major championship. You get to see who is working on shots, who is feeling confident, and often most importantly, who is going through deep, dark struggles.

The folks at Toptracer, who power the ball-tracking stats on the range at the Open Championship, were generous enough to share some data with me. So below are a handful of observations from my experience hanging around the range the last few days and some of the datapoints I found most interesting.

Collin Morikawa is, as they say, down bad right now. The scene I witnessed on Thursday afternoon was bleak. After shooting an opening-round 4-over 75 in which he lost more than 2.5 shots to the field with his irons, one of the game’s best iron players headed to the range for some work with his swing coach. Throughout the session, Morikawa outwardly showed frustration, periodically stepping away from his stall to collect himself. Here are some of the numbers behind that range session:

Morikawa hit 215 total balls on the range on Thursday, and 169 were hit after his round. The post-round session lasted an hour and 24 minutes. He didn’t hit a single driver, and he didn’t hit anything that carried more than 199 yards.

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The contrast between Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler’s post-round range sessions was stark. Scheffler set up near Morikawa about five minutes into Collin’s session. He hit 25 balls in 11 minutes. Every driver he hit was a tight fade, officially fading between four and 50 feet. Scheffler was just out there to stay dialed.

The dichotomy of those respective range sessions will stick with me well after this Open Championship. One 28-year-old two-time major champion was desperately searching for his swing. And one of his contemporaries, the top player in the world, was just looking to stay on cruise control during a little stress-free 10-minute outing. A tale of two range sessions.

Other interesting miscellaneous datapoints I requested:

Bryson DeChambeau hit 372 range balls between Monday and Thursday. He hit only 52 drives on Thursday, all before his round. Fourteen of the tee shots were with driver. Nine of his drives curved from right to left, five of which had at least 80 feet of left curve. His lowest ball flight with driver apexed at 61 feet and had a 186-mph ball speed, presumably testing out the low bullet to prepare for windy conditions. As you may have suspected, DeChambeau is the record holder for highest ball speed on the range this week, clocking in at 200.8 mph. His longest carry flew 387.8 yards.

I’m a bit of a sucker for seeing who is the last to leave the range each night during major championship weeks. Exceptions exist, but more often than not, it isn’t a great sign of what is to come! The Last Man on the Range each night this week:

• Monday: Collin Morikawa
• Tuesday: Viktor Hovland
• Wednesday: Bryson DeChambeau
• Thursday: Andrew Novak

Hovland is currently the low LMOTR at even par (T-34).

‍This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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