Are LPGA players more accurate than PGA players?

In a very interesting article written by Luke Kerr-Dineen, he compares the driving stats for PGA and LPGA players and found 2 points of interest.

"The first is expected: PGA Tour players hit the ball longer, for obvious reasons. The second is a little more surprising: LPGA Tour players hit the ball more accurately. A lot more accurately. It’s not even really close. Thomas Aiken is the most accurate driver on tour this season, and his 74 fairways hit percentage would rank him 42nd on the LPGA Tour. 42nd! The LPGA Tour’s leader, Mo Martin, hits an astonishing 88 percent of her fairways.

That’s not a statistical quirk. Women players are simply more accurate, and here’s why.

Good Mechanics – Speed = Accuracy

Golf is a bit like baseball: No two swings look the same, and while some may look prettier than others, there remains an infinite number of ways to swing a golf club. But the one thing all good golfers have in common is their impact positions. For all the possible variations in their swings, if your body isn’t in a good position at the moment you hit the ball, you’re not going to hit the ball very well."

Top-level men and women golfers share that. Their club faces are basically all square at the moment of impact, and their bodies are generally in the same position at the precise moment they strike the ball. They all, simply put, have very good basic mechanics.

The difference with female professional golfers is that they’re swinging the club slower than their male counterparts. The faster you swing, the harder it becomes to square-up the clubface. The fewer moving parts, the easier it is to hit the ball straight. It’s basic physics, and LPGA Tour players are using it to their advantage.

A Higher Priority

When the powers-that-be want to make courses tougher, they generally do two things: They lengthen the course and grow out the rough so that when the bigger hitters miss fairways, they can’t score well. Because hitting it long and straight is basically impossible, confronted with those scenarios, opting for distance is almost always the better move.

Tougher courses on the LPGA Tour are longer, sure, but more than anything else, they’re narrow. Really narrow. The host of this week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship is the perfect example.

Sahalee Country Club hasn’t hosted a PGA Tour event since 2002 and probably won’t again soon. It’s too short and tight for the men, but it’s a perfect site for LPGA Tour players because it hammers one of their biggest strengths: driving accuracy. And so, just as PGA Tour players attempt to hit the ball longer whenever tournaments try to limit their distance, LPGA Tour players work on hitting it straighter whenever their accuracy is tested. They succeed, of course, at which point the cycle repeats."

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