Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler among PGA Tour’s biggest ball-speed gainers, losers in 2024

Cameron Champ was the fastest man on the PGA Tour in 2024. Not with his pace of play, per se — that honor could go to Ludvig Åberg — but with his golf ball. For the sixth straight season, the three-time PGA Tour winner topped the list with a ball speed averaging 190.41 mph off the tee — a slight uptick compared to his 2023 numbers and far beyond the Tour’s average of 173.73 mph.

Champ wasn’t the only player to speed up his shots; for the most part, the long got longer.

Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele are the two biggest names that made strides in the ball-speed department. While McIlroy has been one of the longest players throughout his career, Schauffele’s surge to the top has been more gradual.

“He’s looked to add speed but did it very methodically, very quietly, very in the dark,” Jordan Spieth said of Schauffele. “It’s been amazing watching him go after the tournament rounds — like on Thursday, Friday, Saturday — and he’ll go to the workout trailer and hit a heavy gym session after the round. It’s not common out here. There’s a few guys that will do it, but it’s still not common. Everybody goes before now; 10, 12 years ago, half the field went before, now everyone does.

“But he’s going after and hitting these heavy workouts with a goal in mind that he thought would gain a slight advantage. He already had a lot of speed, and he did it while maintaining his consistency and his short game, and it just allowed him to hit shorter clubs into greens, which, maybe over the course of four rounds, being a shot or two. The way he approached that patiently is extremely inspiring.”

Schauffele’s work ethic produced one of the greatest major championship seasons in the history of the game. Finishing inside the top 10 across all four major championships — picking off the PGA Championship and The Open along the way — Schauffele’s speed surely had a hand in his success.

Now, Schauffele has never been slow; he’s typically ranked around 35th on the PGA Tour. However, he has never been this fast compared to his peers. Climbing inside the top 10 in ball speed this season, the two-time major champion is just one of many players to realize speed kills.

Notable ball-speed gains (mph)

Schauffele has gained 10 mph in ball speed over the last five years with his biggest jump coming this season courtesy of a new training regime and a more efficient action thanks to swing coach Chris Como. He’s 3 mph faster than guys like Åberg and Byeong Hun An and 5 mph faster than Keith Mitchell.

Meanwhile, there are players like Tony Finau, who always has more fuel in the tank if needed; he often gets to 200 mph playing at home. Finau gained nearly 5 mph in ball speed this year alone, but interestingly, he endured the worst off-the-tee season of his career as wide misses became more prevalent throughout his 2024 campaign. Will he scale things back in 2025 or continue to let it rip?

Taylor Pendrith got healthy after battling a shoulder injury and had one of the more underrated back halves to the year, while Justin Thomas finds himself in the same boat as Finau. Plenty long and with ample firepower, the American’s off-the-tee numbers were about half that from 2017-22 when he was consistently winning.

The most meaningful gains may have gone to Stephan Jaeger. At age 35, the German has made a concerted effort to get faster going from 97th to 72nd to 51st on the PGA Tour in ball speed over the last three seasons. It paid dividends this past spring in Houston when he outdrove and outplayed the best player in the world en route to his first career PGA Tour victory.

Notable ball-speed losses (mph)

The curious case of Cameron Young continued this year as the talented right hander went through another PGA Tour season without entering the winner’s circle. It was not without chances as he factored at the Valspar Championship and Rocket Mortgage Classic; in the latter tournament, he ironically snapped his driver in frustration during the final round.

Since graduating from the Korn Ferry Tour, the Bronx bomber has been one of the longest players on the PGA Tour ranking inside the top five in ball speed over first two seasons. He dropped to 12th and endured his worst off the tee season in 2024. The skillset that is capable of separating him from his peers, Young’s length (and lack of accuracy), is something worth watching next year.

On the flip side, it wasn’t all bad for those who lost some ball speed this past season. In fact, 44-year-old Adam Scott enjoyed a renaissance of sorts finishing T4 at the Tour Championship and polishing off his year with five straight top 20s. The Australian had his best season since 2020 and his best off the tee output since 2018.

Hovland’s struggles have been out in the open for a while now. a dip in ball speed is notable, but it may be chalked up to working through some mechanical aspects of the golf swing. Once he gets right, he should be alright, and the same should go for Denny McCarthy.

Battling a torn labrum in his hip, the putting maestro will aim to get healthy this offseason and continue what was an upward trend in the ball-striking department. He has now improved with his irons in three straight seasons, but McCarthy’s 2024 marked his worst off the tee season as not only was he without distance but also accuracy (for his standards). 

That leaves us with Rickie Fowler, who may have experienced the most disappointing season on the PGA Tour. After scratching and clawing his way back to relevance — winning again, factoring in major championships, playing in the Ryder Cup — across the 2023 campaign, the 35-year-old fell off the face of the map in 2024.

It was the worst season of Fowler’s career (yes, worse than 2022) and his worst off the tee. Fowler has never been shorter relative to his peers and dropped below the PGA Tour average with his 3 mph decrease year-over-year. His play over the last handful of years has many wondering whether the success of 2023 was the outlier and not the other way around.