For many golfers, there is nothing more important than hitting big, long drives. It feels good and impresses playing partners. Even if someone focuses more on the finesse style of the game, every player has had the satisfaction at least on occasion of hitting the ball past their friends or competitors.
How much does it really matter when it comes to success though? The LPGA Tour tells us not particularly much.
While some of the best recent players on the men’s side, Dustin Johnson, Bryson Dechambeau, Brooks Koepka, hit the ball a country mile, that success for the longest hitters doesn’t necessarily translate to the LPGA Tour. The highest ranking player on the 2025 LPGA Tour driving distance rankings to win an LPGA Tour event was A Lim Kim, who ranked No. 11 at 273.32 yards. Just four players in the top 20, Charley Hull (12), Jennifer Kupcho (15) and Haeran Ryu (19) had wins in 2025.
World No. 1, Player of the Year and three-time winner in 2025, Jeeno Thitikul, is a bit deceptively long. Because Thitikul ranked No. 3 in greens in regulation percentage and No. 4 in strokes gained putting, many fans see her as more of a finesse player, but Thitikul is so well rounded because she combines both the incredible skill with solid power. She ranked No. 33 in driving distance. Minjee Lee, who was the second best player in the world for much of the season, ranked No. 36.
Miyu Yamashita, who won twice in 2025 including at a major championship, shows how little it matters when you are elite everywhere else. Yamashita finished No. 2 in the CME Standings in 2025 despite giving up roughly 40 yards off the tee to the longest hitters in the world. She ranked No. 141 on the Tour at 245.99 and during her AIG Women’s Open win hit it only 217.86 yards on average. No. 99 in the field, that is almost 70 yards shorter on average than Julia Lopez Ramirez.
Of course, driving distance is an imperfect stat to measure true power. Ariya Jutanugarn and Lexi Thompson for example are two of the longest hitters in the world, but Thompson rarely uses her driver and Jutanugarn’s longest club is a fairway wood. Both rank outside of the top 60 in driving distance despite their immense power that would probably rank top 10 on the Tour. Lopez Ramirez on the other hand, is very aggressive off the tee.
Nelly Korda is an example of a player who added some power to her game in 2025, but didn’t quite see as strong results. Korda added almost five yards per drive, jumping from No. 20 on the Tour in 2024 to No. 8 in 2025. She also went from seven wins to a slightly misleading zero wins. Korda was still great in 2025, but that extra length wasn’t a big help.
The top five players in average driving distance in 2025 were Julia Lopez Ramirez, Polly Mack, Auston Kim, Bianca Pagdanganan and Bailey Tardy. Those five players combined to go 55/100 on made cuts, had no wins and just six combined top-10 finishes. Kim accounted for five of those. Kim was also the only one to make the CME Group Tour Championship.
This isn’t to say that driving distance is bad. Depending on the course and the scenario, it is a valuable weapon for a player to have. But, across a full season, it doesn’t mean all that much to long term success.
