Total Driving
Total driving is a PGA Tour statistic that combines a golfer’s rank in driving distance with his rank in driving accuracy. The lower the combined number, the better a player drives the ball for both length and control.
What is total driving?
Golf has always carried a tension between hitting the ball far and hitting it straight, and total driving is the PGA Tour’s attempt to score both at once. Rather than reward raw power or pinpoint accuracy on its own, the stat looks at where a player ranks in each category and blends the two into a single figure.
The Tour has tracked it since 1987. It answers a question that a single driving number cannot: which players get the most out of the tee box overall, not just the ones who bomb it or the ones who never miss a fairway. A golfer who ranks near the top in distance but sprays drives into the rough will not score well here, and neither will a short hitter who finds every fairway.
Because distance and accuracy tend to pull against each other, no one ranks first in both. The player who leads the Tour in driving distance is almost never the same player who leads in total driving. That trade-off is the whole point of the stat. It surfaces the golfers who manage both sides of the equation better than anyone else.
How total driving is calculated
The math is plain. The PGA Tour arrives at the figure by adding a player’s rank in driving distance to his rank in driving accuracy. Take the two ranks, sum them, and that total is his total driving number.
Say a player ranks 15th in driving distance and 43rd in driving accuracy. His total driving number is 58. A lower total means a better result, so a golfer sitting at 58 is driving the ball well across both measures. The best possible score is 2, which would require ranking first in distance and first in accuracy in the same season. That has never happened.
Driving distance is the average yardage per measured drive, calculated from two holes each round. Driving accuracy is the percentage of drives that come to rest in the fairway. Neither ranking is weighted or adjusted before the two are added, which is why the stat is often described as one of the Tour’s simpler, old-school measures.
Total driving vs. strokes gained: off the tee
Modern golf broadcasts lean on strokes gained: off the tee, and it is easy to assume the two stats measure the same thing. They do not.
Total driving ranks players on two traditional numbers, distance and fairways hit, then adds those ranks together. Strokes gained: off the tee, developed by Columbia professor Mark Broadie, measures each tee shot on par 4s and par 5s against the Tour average from the same spot, then expresses the result as strokes gained or lost against the field. One is a blunt combination of ranks. The other is a shot-by-shot value built from the Tour’s ShotLink data.
The practical difference shows up with wild long hitters. A player can rank poorly in driving accuracy, and therefore in total driving, yet still gain strokes off the tee because his length leaves shorter approach shots even from the rough. Total driving treats a missed fairway as a flat penalty. Strokes gained asks whether that miss actually cost the player anything.
| Total driving | Strokes gained: off the tee |
|---|---|
| Combined rank in driving distance and accuracy | The value of each tee shot versus the field |
| Expressed as one summed number, lower is better | Expressed as strokes gained or lost per round |
| Built from season-long rankings in two stats | Built from ShotLink shot-by-shot data |
| Tracked by the Tour since 1987 | Broadie’s method, adopted by the Tour in the 2010s |
| Excludes par 3 tee shots | Counts par 3 tee shots as approach shots |
What counts as a good total driving number
Context matters here, because the raw number means little without knowing how the field is spread. A total in the 50s or 60s usually places a golfer near the top of the category for a season. Anything under 40 is rare.
The Tour-leading total has dropped below 40 only three times since tracking began: Ludvig Aberg’s 33 in 2023, David Duval’s 35 in 1999, and Greg Norman’s 36 in 1988. Michael Thorbjornsen led the 2025 season at 54, built on a 6th-place finish in distance and 48th in accuracy.
Greg Norman is the only player to lead the category in three separate seasons, topping it in 1988, 1989 and 1993. No one else has managed it more than twice.
Where total driving fits among PGA Tour stats
Total driving is itself a building block for another stat. The Tour’s ball striking measure combines a player’s rank in total driving with his rank in greens in regulation, stacking one composite on top of another.
One point of confusion is worth clearing up. The Tour also lists a stat called total driving efficiency, which is a different measure built from carry efficiency and total distance efficiency. Despite the similar name, it is not the same as total driving. When broadcasters or stat pages refer simply to total driving, they mean the classic distance-plus-accuracy ranking.
Related Golf Terms
- One-putt percentage — The rate at which a player needs only one putt on a green.
- Bogey avoidance — A measure of how well a player limits bogeys and worse.
- Scrambling percentage — The rate of making par after missing a green in regulation.
- Three-putt avoidance — A measure of how rarely a player three-putts.
- Proximity to the hole — The average distance approach shots finish from the cup.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a high or low total driving number better?
Lower is better. The number is the sum of two rankings, so a smaller total means the golfer placed higher in distance and accuracy combined. The best possible score is 2.
Has anyone ever scored a perfect 2 in total driving?
No. It would require finishing first in both driving distance and driving accuracy in the same season, and the trade-off between power and control has kept anyone from coming close.
Does total driving include par 3 tee shots?
No. Like the driving distance and driving accuracy stats it is built from, total driving counts only tee shots on par 4s and par 5s, where players are hitting driver.
Is total driving the same as total distance?
No. Total distance describes how far a single drive travels, including carry and roll. Total driving is a season-long ranking that blends distance and accuracy across many drives.
Sources
- PGA Tour. “Total Driving.” PGA TOUR Stats. Accessed August 2026.
https://www.pgatour.com/stats/detail/129 - Golf Compendium. “Yearly Total Driving Leaders on the PGA Tour.” Accessed August 2026.
https://www.golfcompendium.com/2024/12/total-driving-leaders-pga-tour.html - The Sport Journal. “A New Method for Ranking Total Driving Performance on the PGA Tour.” Accessed August 2026.
https://thesportjournal.org/article/a-new-method-for-ranking-total-driving-performance-on-the-pga-tour/ - Golf Tips Magazine. “Total Driving.” Accessed August 2026.
https://golftipsmag.com/instruction/driving/total-driving/ - CBS Sports. “There’s a lot to learn from golf’s strokes gained stats.” Accessed August 2026.
https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/theres-a-lot-to-learn-from-golfs-strokes-gained-stats-including-its-new-one
