Tiering Golf's Best Drivers in the World

Today we’re honing in on one of golf’s most important skills: driving. I’ve tiered the best drivers of the golf ball in the world, which will be of particular importance at the season’s second men’s major championship next week at Quail Hollow. Plus, a couple thoughts on a legend of the sport and expectations for Philadelphia Cricket Club. 

A few notes: 

Six of my top 13 drivers in the world all play on LIV Golf. If you don’t pay any attention to LIV, your biggest statistical surprises might be how well both Tom McKibbin and David Puig drive the ball. 

People will likely take issue with my fourth row: “Great Drivers Historically.” These are all golfers whose current driving form may not warrant making the graphic, but it would feel wrong to omit them given their historical strength off the tee. Xander Schauffele, for example, is clearly not an elite driver of the golf ball right now. But I want some balance between the current moment and past performance. 

Kevin Yu: let’s work on your play on and around the green, but you are an incredible driver of the golf ball. 

If you needed a golfer to hit a fairway to save your life, you’d feel really good with anybody in the bottom row. They all hit the ball on a string. I’d probably choose Aaron Rai if I could only pick one. 

Player Spotlight: Sergio Garcia

When I started writing this weekly update, I planned to spotlight how only two golfers, Russell Henley and Collin Morikawa, have finished in the top 30 on the PGA Tour in Driving Accuracy over the last five years. 

Instead, I can’t shake the following question from my head: Where does Sergio Garcia rank among the best drivers of the golf ball in the history of the sport? I think there’s a strong case to be made that he is near the very top of that list. 

From the moment Sergio joined the professional ranks to the present, he’s been one of the best drivers in the world with very few down periods in between. At age 45, he’s still crushing the competition off the tee. This year on LIV, Garcia ranks fourth in Fairway Percentage and 23rd (out of 54) in Driving Distance. We don’t have Strokes Gained data from the first few years of Garcia’s career, but it’s reasonable to assume he’s been a positive driver of the golf ball every year of his career since 1999. And throughout those years, he’s often been a top 10 driver. He was No. 1 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee on the PGA Tour in 2005 and No. 3 in 2021. That’s insanity! 

In the history of golf, how many players have been elite drivers of the ball for 30 years? An obvious caveat: we don’t have statistics to capture the excellence of many of the game’s legends. Greg Norman was an elite driver, and it’d be hard to argue against him. Ben Hogan could drive the ball. Jack Nicklaus wasn’t too shabby either. 

I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that Garcia belongs in that class. In the modern era of equipment optimization and speed, it’s hard to imagine many golfers will be near the top of the ranks off the tee for 30 years. 

Of course, Rory McIlroy already deserves strong consideration for that title, as well. He’s arguably been the best driver of the ball in the world for nearly 20 years in a row. If his career ended today, he’d go down as the best driver of the golf ball in the modern era and perhaps the best driver of all time. 

Still, I’m blown away by Garcia’s longevity. You’re not supposed to be able to drive the ball this well so late in your career. The guy has been finding the center of the club face with speed for almost three decades. If there were a pro golf tournament using old equipment where the sweet spot on the driver isn’t the size of the entire face, I wouldn’t bet on too many golfers ahead of Sergio. 

Reader-Submitted Question

Reader: How is Philly Cricket Club going to hold up this week? 

Answer: Yeah…that’s kind of the million-dollar question this week, right?

My general mental model is that a golf course has to be very difficult to pose a legitimate challenge to the world’s best players. If you’re not sure how well it will hold up to the modern game, I’d err on the side of it not holding up as well as you expect. Challenging the top players in the world in 2025 involves some combination of length, penalty off the tee, diabolical greens, firmness, and wind. The greens at Philly Cricket Club should pose some challenge, but none of the other four criteria are satisfied. With more rain in the forecast, I just don’t foresee a soft 7,100-yard golf course built 100 years ago holding up particularly well. 

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That said, there are only two par 5s, so I’m not saying the field will necessarily TPC Craig Ranch this place. I expect some low scores, though. The Las Vegas line for the winning score sits around 19.5 under, which is reasonable. If you made me take one side or the other, I’d take that it will be lower, but conditions and setup will dictate much of that.

So all in all, two things are true: 

1. Bringing a signature event to an architecturally significant A.W. Tillinghast golf course in a major metro area is something to be celebrated.
2. The modern game, from equipment to technology, has bypassed golf courses like Philly Cricket Club. When the golf course is soft and conditions are fairly calm, it’s target practice. 

We haven’t seen top players in the world attack PCC, so I could easily end up being wrong about all of this. But I feel like I’ve seen this movie before, and someone is 5-under through seven holes on Thursday and people start complaining that it’s too easy. That isn’t an indictment of the golf course, or the setup, or of Golden Age architecture. That’s just the state of the current game. 

I hope that I’m wrong and we see a wonderful, stern test of golf over the next four days. But more than that, I hope weeks like this highlight the benefits of an equipment rollback and why it’d be a huge positive to be able to play elite championships at historic venues. 

Ok, that’s all for this week. Have a question you’d like me to answer for next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com!