How far should each club go?

Far enough that you know the gap to the next club, and not so far that you are quoting a drive from a downhill, downwind hole. The useful number is the one you can repeat, usually carry for irons and a carry-plus-a-honest-roll for the driver.

Carry and total are different questions

Carry is flight. Total is flight plus roll. Trackman’s tour tables are carry. Shot Scope and Arccos, measured on the course, are total. A 15-handicap 7-iron can be about 138 yards of scaled tour carry and 154 yards of on-course total without either figure being “wrong.” The chart on this site names which one it is showing.

Gaps matter more than the hero number

A bag that goes driver, then a 40-yard hole, then a cluster of wedges that all go the same distance is a bag with a missing club and three duplicates. Full-swing iron gaps around 10 to 14 yards are a common target. Wider than about 20 yards between irons is a yardage you may not have a comfortable swing for. The chart flags those. It does not sell you the club.

Age and handicap averages

Published driver totals get shorter with age. Arccos’s 2024 figures put men of all ages at 224.7 yards total and men over 70 at 190. That is a real pattern. It is not a reason to shorten a carry you measured last Tuesday. Use the average chart when you do not have your own number. Use your own number when you do.

Open the club distance chart. The figures behind it:

• Trackman PGA Tour averages. Carry in yards, driver through pitching wedge, from Trackman’s published PGA Tour averages table (club speed, ball speed, and carry). Driver 275, 3-wood 243, 5-wood 230, hybrid (15–18°) 225, 4-iron 203, 5-iron 194, 6-iron 183, 7-iron 172, 8-iron 160, 9-iron 148, pitching wedge 136.
• Trackman Carry Optimizer. Driver carry at a level (0°) attack angle, from Trackman’s Carry Optimizer fitting chart: 75 mph 154, 80 mph 171, 85 mph 187, 90 mph 203, 95 mph 219, 100 mph 235, 105 mph 251, 110 mph 266, 115 mph 281, 120 mph 296 yards.
• Trackman amateur driver study. Average male amateur driver: 93.4 mph club speed and 204 yards of carry. Cited on Trackman’s blog from Trackman’s amateur performance study (Christian Hahn, 7 July 2017).
• Shot Scope on-course totals by handicap. Male golfers, total distance in yards, as published from Shot Scope data by GolfMagic and MyGolfSpy. Bands are scratch, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25. Ten-handicap golfers are longer than five-handicaps with some short clubs in the source table; that is the published data, not a typing error.
• Arccos 2025 Driving Distance Report (2024 shots). On-course driver totals (carry plus roll) from a random sample of 25,000 golfers and 6,576,228 driver tee shots on par 4s and par 5s. Figures used here are the ones printed by Golf Business News and by Lou Stagner’s summary of that report: men 224.7, women 176.2, men 15–19 241.6, men over 70 190, women in their 20s 201.1, women in their 60s 160. Low-handicap age splits from the same report, via Lou Stagner: men 20s and 0–4.9 handicap 265.7, men 70s and 0–4.9 211.5, women 20s low handicap 245.7, women 60s low handicap 183.6.