The Little Golfer Who Could

The PGA Tour's weekly news release included an interesting ShotLink figure: J.B. Holmes leads the tour in driver carry - 302.3 yards of carry. Corey Pavin is last in driver carry - 233.3 yards of carry. Pavin carries his driver a full 69 yards shorter than Holmes.

Yet it's Pavin who has the better adjusted scoring average (scoring average weighted to take into account the difficulty of courses played), leading Holmes 70.00 to 70.65.

In total driving distance - carry plus roll - Holmes is No. 2 and Pavin is still last (No. 200), although the gap isn't quite as large because Pavin gets more roll. Holmes' average is 309.2 compared to Pavin's 261.4.

No. 1 in total driving distance is Bubba Watson at 313.6, and Pavin outscores him, too. Watson's adjusted scoring average is 70.84.

Here's a comparison of the scoring averages of the top 10 and bottom 10 players in driving distance:

Scott and Kim skew the results in favor of the long hitters, and the short hitters group suffers from having several older guys who are well past their primes. But on the whole, not a ton of difference.

Everything else being equal, long hitters have the advantage over short hitters. But having huge distance guarantees nothing; the long hitters have to be good at other parts of the game, too. And having comparitively no distance doesn't guarantee that you won't be successful - but you better be excellent in other parts of the game, as Pavin is, if you want to score well.

If you're as good or better than Pavin in other parts of the game and you hit it 50  yards farther, well, then you're Phil Mickelson or Vijay Singh.